Hello xSpitez1, I'm ThatOneMushroomGuy and I'll be the TA handling your critique today.

Arrows

Starting with your arrows your lines are looking fairly confident and smooth, which helps communicate a nice sense of fluidity in your arrows as they move through the world.

You're making good usage of the depth of the page by experimenting with the rates of foreshortening in your arrows, but your arrows do sometimes look a bit unnatural as it seems to me you become a bit unsure of how their edges should overlap which causes them to look distorted. So don't be afraid of letting your edges overlap and to ensure that you're constructing a solid structure, try to construct your arrow in segments with the ghosting method, in this manner you can gauge whether your marks look right and overlap the way they should before committing to a line.

Your usage of hatching helps you establish how your arrows twist and turn in space and further your own understanding of the tridimensional space these objects occupy, but do remember that your hatching lines must still follow the principles of ghosting and mark-making, they must have clear end and start points, be carefully planned and execute and not end at arbitrary points. As a finishing touch to your arrows don't forget to make use of added line weight on top of the overlaps to reinforce their depth.

Leaves

The linework for your leaves is looking smooth which helps communicate their fluidity and sense of energy, it's good that you're not only trying to capture how these structures sit statically within space, but also how they move across it from moment to moment.

When it comes to your application of edge detail it can be improved, it's good to see that you're putting down your new marks with the same thickness as the rest of your construction, but you need to spend more time with the execution of each mark - because there are so many and they seem individually unimportant, you're putting less time into each one and so they do not properly rise off and return to the existing stroke - there are often gaps, overshoots, and zigzagging marks such as in all of these leaves which is a mistake that could be avoided by putting more time into the work.

No mark you draw is unimportant - if you decided it was worth adding, it's worth giving as much time as it needs to be done to the best of your current ability.

Moving on to your addition of texture it's another point that can be improved upon, as you've got several small and timid marks, and several big spaces of white which would communicate that the surface of your structure is smooth.

There's much more going on than just a few stray marks implying veins and we can do much more to communicate this type of texture, take a look at this informal demo on how to approach leaf texture, and make sure to give these reminders on how texture works in Drawabox a read.

Branches

Moving on to your branches you are deviating from the instructions for this exercise, while it's good to see that you're drawing your edges in segments you're not starting your new segment back at the previous ellipse point and superimposing it on top of the preexisting structure, instead you either stop your segment at the next ellipse point, or draw edges in a singe stroke, which is a mistake, both of these are issues because they remove the healthy overlaps we seek to achieve in these structures.

So remember how branches should be approached, by having your segment start at the first ellipse point, extending it past the second ellipse and fully up to the halfway point to the third ellipse, afterwards you'll start a new segment, making sure to place your pen at the second ellipse and repeat this pattern until your entire branch is complete.

For your ellipses you're not always drawing through them twice, which is a mistake that leaves them looser and less smooth overall, so don't forget this crucial step when drawing ellipses. For your application of the ellipse degree shift to your branches it can be improved, as it stands your degrees are too consistent and hardly change which is a mistake that flattens your structures. Remember that as a form shifts in relation to the viewer, so will the degree of the ellipses within that structure also shift.

Plant Construction Section

And lastly let's take a look at your plant constructions, which are turning out quite well made. You're generally making use of the construction methods and techniques introduced in this Lesson which helps you create the illusion of tridimensionality in your work.

You're starting to develop a strong sense of spatial reasoning, there are only a couple of things that if kept in mind will help you take your work to the next level.

In this plant construction I'm glad to see that you added a boundary in order to keep your petal structures consistent with one another, however they don't actually reach and respect the boundary you laid out. When you're using a boundary to help you decide how to build out a structure, follow it specifically, don't leave the relationship between them weak and arbitrary, otherwise it may as well not exist.

Don't forget to keep your construction always confined to the apace of your page, don't allow forms to run off from the page and don't leave cylindrical structures open ended, cap them off with an ellipse.

When it comes to your addition of edge detail in your plant construction pages it's really hit or miss, you did well in your aloe vera construction, but in this construction you once again started to zigzag your marks which is a mistake, and in constructions such as in here or here edge detail is missing completely.

Keep in mind that edge detail is another step of the construction process, it helps you futher communicate how your structures exist and move through a 3 dimensional space and as such it must be considered and applied with the correct steps whenever possible. Only the last stage of construction - texture - is optional.

Ease up on your lineweight, it's thick, with several passes going over the same marks, and that smooths everything out too much. Almost as if you pulled a sock over a vase, it softens the distinctions between the forms and flattens the structures out somewhat. Instead lineweight must be subtle, used only to clarify the overlaps between the forms that are being built up, as explained here.

• When approaching cylindrical structures such as plant pots make sure to start with a minor axis in order to keep your several ellipses aligned to each other more easily.

Onto your usage of texture in these pages it can be improved upon, as it stands your marks look random and unplanned, they're also very timid and small, and you're making use of hatching at points in an attempt to communicate texture which is a mistake as it does not follow the principles of texture in this course.

So let's revisit how texture in Drawabox is approached, by looking back on this page we can refresh our memory and see that texture through the lens of Drawabox is communicated through the use of cast shadows.

It is not used to make our work aesthetic or pretty, instead every textural form we draw is based on what's physically present in our reference. Our focus should be on understanding how each individual form sits in 3D space and how that form then creates a shadow that is cast onto that same surface. Only after analyzing all of this information present in our reference will we be able to translate it to our construction. This means that the shape of our shadow is important as it's the shape that defines the relationships between the form casting it and the surface it's being cast on, which is why we need to consider carefully how to design a shadow shape that feels dynamic.

This approach is of course much harder than basing our understanding of texture on other methods that may seem more intuitive or basing it on the idea that texture = making our work look good, but in the long run this method of applying texture is the one that enforces the ideals of spatial reasoning taught in this course. By following these ideals, you'll find yourself asking how to convey texture in the most efficient way possible, with less lines and ink, focusing on the implicit mark-making techniques introduced in Lesson 2. Make sure to go over these reminders in order to solidify your understanding of texture further.

Final Thoughts

You're applying the concepts taught in this lesson to great effect. For the most part your constructions are looking solid and tridimensional. Make sure to keep the points I mentioned here today in mind.

I'm going to be marking this lesson as complete as I believe you're ready to tackle the challenges present in the next lesson. Good luck in Lesson 4.