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

Arrows

Let's start this critique by talking about your arrows, they're looking quite smooth and confidently made, this helps with communicating the fluidity that these objects have as they move through the world.

Just remember to finish them off by always adding lineweight on top of the overlaps to reinforce them.

Overall you're doing really well in this exercise, your arrows are looking very tridimensional and you're exploring the space available to you of well, but make sure to experiment with more different kinds of arrows next time you attempt this exercise, while your arrows look good they also look very similar, so make sure to push yourself out of your comfort zone and explore all the different ways arrows can twist, bend and fold as they move across the world.

Leaves

Moving on to your leaves, they're looking really energetic and have a nice sense of flow added to them as the fluidity present in your arrows translates nicely into these new structures. You're not only capturing how your leaves sit statically in space, but also how they move across the world from moment to moment as they're influenced by outside forces.

It's good to see that you're also experimenting with some more complex types of leaf structures, and doing so by following the instructions, which allows you to create a much tighter and more solid looking structure that still feels flexible and energetic.

Your addition of edge detail is generally looking good, as you don't usually attempt to capture more than one piece of edge detail at a time, and you generally construct your edge detail additively. You're also keeping the line thickness between your phases of construction roughly consistent, all of which is very good and helps you create a tighter, more solid construction that still feels fluid and energetic.

Branches

Moving on to your branches they are coming along really decently made as you're following the instructions for the exercise, you're drawing your edges in segments which allows you to maintain higher control over your marks and helps you create solid but still organic looking structures.

There are a lot of visible tails present in these branch structures, while this is a very common mistake we can attempt to mitigate it by limiting the amount of ellipses in our branches, by spacing them further apart we'll allow for a bigger length of runway between ellipses, and ensure a smoother, more seamless transition between marks.

Your addition of edge detail is generally looking good, as you don't usually attempt to capture more than one piece of edge detail at a time, and you generally construct your edge detail additively. You're also keeping the line thickness between your phases of construction roughly consistent, all of which is very good and helps you create a tighter, more solid construction that still feels fluid and energetic.

Plant Construction Section

And lastly let's take a look at your plant constructions, which are generally coming along well made, as you're following the construction methods and techniques introduced in the lesson which allows you to construct really solid looking and believably tridimensional structures. I can see a good developing sense of spatial reasoning in these pages.

However there are some issues present in these pages which are holding you back from your full potential. So here are the points you should keep in mind whenever you tackle these exercises again so that you can continue to develop your skills.

Always keep in mind that the construction methods and techniques introduced in this course must always be applied to your work, as they're tools which will help you construct much tighter and solid looking structures, there are times where you deviate from the construction methods by not drawing your leaves with the correct leaf construction method. Remember that they're not guidelines or suggestions - they are rules. On top of that, make sure to always go through as much of the lesson material as possible, the informal demos page often has really valuable and sometimes the most up to date information due to the nature of this ever evolving course.

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. Going further don't forget to construct the outer rim that's present in most types of plant pots, and make sure to add a ground plane to your structures, this line is necessary when constructing plant pots because otherwise your structure will look like it's floating in mind air, which breaks the illusion of the construction.

• Because we're drawing on a flat piece of paper, we have a lot of freedom to make whatever marks we choose - it just so happens that the majority of those marks will contradict the illusion you're trying to create and remind the viewer that they're just looking at a series of lines on a flat piece of paper. In order to avoid this and stick only to the marks that reinforce the illusion we're creating, we can force ourselves to adhere to certain rules as we build up our constructions.

• For example - once you've put a form down on the page, do not attempt to alter its silhouette. Its silhouette is just a shape on the page which represents the form we're drawing, but its connection to that form is entirely based on its current shape. If you change that shape, you won't alter the form it represents - you'll just break the connection, leaving yourself with a flat shape. We can see this most easily in this example of what happens when we cut back into the silhouette of a form.

While this is something that you do generally respect, you do often extend off of preexisting forms or cutting back into preexisting form's silhouettes because you don't follow the steps on how to construct poles.

You can find here more information that talks about how to make use of organic forms to construct plants that aren't simple branches with leaf structures attached to them, and you can see here how you can construct on top of your preexisting structures with new organic forms.

Final Thoughts

In general you are doing well and your work is looking good, you make use of the techniques and exercises really effectively, and you demonstrate a great sense of spatial reasoning in your work, just don't forget that all techniques and methods must always be applied to your work.

I'm going to be marking this lesson as complete. Good luck in Lesson 4.