Lesson 3: Applying Construction to Plants
11:35 AM, Saturday June 1st 2024
thanks in advance for your feedback
Hello Jukesir, congrats on finishing lesson 3! I'll be critiquing your submission.
Organic Arrows
Your arrows are looking good! The page is a little sparse, I would have like to see more than six arrows, however the arrows you've drawn demonstrate an understanding of the exercise and appear to flow toward the viewer adequately. Good job!
Leaves
Same feedback here, still plenty of room on the page to fill. Additionally, these leaves lack the variety that one can see from nature - leaves come in all manner of shapes, sizes, and groupings, and these all seem to share in those qualities. That being said, you've followed the lesson instructions well! The leaves flow nicely, you've purposefully designed each detail and curve around the edges, and respected your construction as laid out by your center-line and bounding curves.
Branches
Now this page is much more full! I have two notes about your branches:
Your ellipses are well aligned to your minor axis, however your center lines are largely straight. I would have like to see some more curved branches here, as keeping your ellipses aligned to a curving minor axis is a bit more challenging, and can help to highlight how branches behave at sharper curves and more acute angles.
The degrees of your ellipses are a little inconsistent - to convey a sense of appropriate perspective and solidity, it helps to have more narrow degrees at the cross-sections which are closes to the viewer, and wider degrees at those further away. I was not able to identify a consistent sense of flow through these branches, which undermined their solidity a bit. Keeping the degree-shifts consistent can help to sell this illusion more.
Plant Constructions
These look solid and believable to me! I have some minor criticisms, however I believe these broadly demonstrate an understanding of the lesson material.
On the sunflower, the intersection point where the branch meets the back of the bud is unclear - I'm almost certain this is because you were copying what you could see from the reference image and ignoring the rest. In a case like this, I would reccomend using a second or third image as a reference for the parts that you can't see, and to at least sketch out roughly how those elements exist in space with respect to the rest of your reference image. Here, because you've ignored the elements on the back of the bud, the entire piece ended up flattening out. The stem should hook around and curve into the bud, in a more conical shape, transitioning from the stem into the base of the bud, but instead the stem just goes straight up with no curvature back as it approaches the bud. For example, using this as a reference, we can extrapolate how the back of the bud would look even if we can't see it in our primary reference image. This is closer to how I might expect the stem to curve so that it naturally transitions into the bud, and this is how I would have approached the construction. I am aware that my example is closer to a 3/4 view of the flower, whereas yours is more of a front view (which would change how much of the curvature we would see) but I chose to draw it this way to illustrate a point - those sections in the back that we can't see directly are definitely worth constructing anyway, because those shapes do exist and have a real impact on how the rest of the shapes in our final construction that we actually can see relate to each other.
Your other constructions turned out well though! The bulbs of the cactus curve nicely around eachother, and I especially like how your corn flower turned out - the ellipses of the branch are consistent in their degree-shifts and as a result the whole construction looks solid, and those petals at the top flow nicely. Great job drawing through the ground on the onions, establishing the shapes that we can't directly see. Your aloe is immediately recognizable and each detail was created intentionally and individually.
Overall, I think this was a solid submission that demonstrates an adequate understanding of the lesson material. I would continue to practice sketching out the unseen sections of our drawings to establish a more full understanding of how all the shapes relate to one another, but other than that you seem to have a good grasp on the constructional method for branches and leaves. Great work!
Next Steps:
Time to move on to lesson 4! Great job!
This is one of my favourite books. It's a fantasy-comedy romp, and the world that J. Zachary Pike has created honestly takes my breath away. There are laughs at every turn, but the story is not without its heart wrenching moments - some for which I have yet to fully forgive the author.
If you're at all curious about the kinds of nonsense I read, or just need something new to sink your teeth into, this is one I can highly recommend. On top of that, being self-published by an indie author, it's the kind of thing where your individual support can go a long way.
P.S: The audiobook, with narration from Doug Tisdale, is especially good, and elevates the story in ways I can't rightly describe.
This website uses cookies. You can read more about what we do with them, read our privacy policy.