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

Arrows

Starting with your arrows they're looking quite fluid due to how confidently they're drawn. You're making good use of the depth of the page and communicating a great sense of perspective in your arrows.

Your hatching is neat and tidy, as well as correctly placed, this helps reinforce the perspective in your arrows.

What I can recommend that you keep in mind when tackling this exercise again, is to simply remember to add the finishing touches with added lineweight on top of your arrow's overlaps in order to reinforce them as you don't always make use of it.

Overall, you've done really well in this exercise.

Leaves

The fluidity present in your arrows is carrying nicely into your leaves, they're looking energetic and have a good sense of flow, you're not only capturing how these leaves sit statically within space but also how they move across the world.

Your application of edge detail is looking good, but be careful, as you have a tendency to add it with small marks that hardly lift off the page. For the most part you make good use of it in this leaf but for example, in this leaf the edge detail doesn't communicate much new information to the viewer because the marks don't lift up significantly from the outer edge before coming down again, which makes some parts of your leaves look like extra patches of added lineweight, not edge detail.

For this leaf you also make great use of the complex leaf construction method.

Branches

Moving on to your branches they're looking quite well made, they're looking pretty solid as you make use of the branch construction method very effectively.

You have some visible tail in your compound strokes, but for the most part your accuracy is pretty good, as you keep practicing it you'll continue to improve.

Moving on to your ellipses, remember to always draw through them twice. Also keep in mind that you can improve the ellipse degree variation in your branches, while you seem aware of the degree shift and apply it very effectively for the most part, sometimes your degrees don't change. Remember that as a cylindrical form shifts towards or away from the viewer, the degree of the ellipses within that structure will also gradually shift.

Plant Construction Section

Moving on to your plant constructions, they're coming out very solid and well made, you're clearly developing a great understanding of spatial reasoning. Going forward, here are a couple of points and things you can keep in mind to keep developing your skills and take your work to the next level.

For your first construction some of your leaf structures are looking a little bit stiff, this happens because you're too focused on capturing the likeness of the leaves in your reference, but this causes you not to use the leaf construction method to it's full potential, as you don't start your outer edges from the start of your flow line, and sometimes leave gaps between your edges and the flow line, keep in mind that they must connect.

We're not trying to accurately depict these plants we draw, we simply use them as tridimensional puzzles that we must solve through the use of the methods and techniques introduced in the lesson material.

It's good to see that you're generally constructing cylindrical structures such as flower pots around a minor axis. Although this stem should also have been approached with a minor axis.

In your venus fly trap construction you sometimes end up zigzaging your edge detail, which is a mistake as outlined here.

You don't seem to be fully applying the branch construction method in some of your constructions.

There are two things we must allow ourselves when tackling these exercises, they are time and space. You often times attempt to capture very leafy plants, and generally attempt to capture big parts of them, while this isn't a mistake at all, this does limit your ability to apply some of the concepts introduced in the lesson, such as the branch construction method. Your branches end up turning out very thin as a result, which doesn't allow you to draw your ellipses from the shoulder, and sometimes forces you to skip the line extension method.

Make sure that when you choose a plant for reference, or any other structure, that you're focusing on a section of the plant that allows you to draw comfortably and engage your entire arm while drawing.

For your use of texture you're generally moving in the right direction with the way you add it to your flower, although you're not completely following the principles of texture when you add it to your succulent.

Texture in the context of this course is an extension of the concepts of construction, with construction being focused on the big and primitive forms that make up different structures and texture focusing on communicating the small forms that run along the surface an object, essentially texture is a form of visually communicating to the viewer what it would feel like to run their hands across that object's surface.

None of this has to do with decorating any of our drawings, what we draw here is based on what's physically present in our construction. As introduced here, we can notice that we should focus on each individual form and how it casts a shadow on neighboring surfaces, understanding how each individual form sits on a 3D space, and closely analyzing all of this information present in our reference to be able to translate it to our study. The shape of this 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, as such you should design your shadow shape in a way that feels dynamic, as shown here.

This approach is of course much harder than basing our understanding of texture on other methods that may seem more intuitive, but in the long run this method of texture is the one who enforces the ideas of spatial reasoning taught in this course. By following these ideas, you'll find yourself asking how to convey texture in the most efficient way possible, with less lines and ink, focusing more on the implicit mark-making techniques introduced in Lesson 2. Going forward here are a couple of final reminders of how texture in Drawabox is approached.

Final Thoughts

You're demonstrating a great understanding of these techniques and methods, as well as a great sense of spatial reasoning. Your constructions are coming out quite solid as a result. You're doing a fantastic job with these exercises and I've got no doubt you've understood the lesson material, as such I'll be marking this submission as complete. Good luck in Lesson 4.