Hello I’ll be handling the critique for your lesson 3 homework.

Organic Arrows

-Starting by the organic arrows these are drawn with a good deal of confidence which really helped you to capture the fluidity with which they move through space, you are also making some good attempts at the perspective of the arrows and you seem to be aware that the ribbon should get wider as it moves closer to us. You have also kept in mind that the negative space between the zigzagging sections of the arrow should decrease as it moves further away from the viewer, however there are some cases, like the arrows on the top center that feel flat, because you forgot to apply this principle. These arrows just misshapen, however there is one other thing I want to call out, and that is lineweight, you are applying it on the specific parts where the ribbon overlaps, which is correct, but you tend to make it pretty thick. Remember to be subtle with it, and only add one superimposed line.

Branches

-The branches are turning out nicely, you are aware of the degree shift of the ellipses as they move through space, and you are extending each segment fully halfway to the next ellipse, the only thing I want to call out is that sometimes the segments do not overlap correctly, try to use each previous segment as a runway and make sure that they overlap a good deal in order to achieve a smoother transition. This is just a matter of mileage and I have no doubt you will continue to improve with practice.

Leaves

-The fluidity with which you drew your initial arrows carries over nicely to your leaves, and you manage to capture how these sit in 3D spàce, I like to see that you have taken your time to design each individual bum and cut on the edges of each leaf, which helped you to achieve a more dynamic result. It is good to see that you have tried more complex structures and you have used the constructional method correctly, building it one step at a time, and making a lot of simpler moves rather than trying to capture a lot of things at once.

Plants

-Moving on to the plants I can see the same good employment of the construction method, and you have broken each of your subjects into their more primitive elements. The drawings themselves are very pretty, but I do see some things to call out.

-The first thing I want to call out is that you are capturing texture with hatching, as explained in this section of lesson 2, we are not worrying about shading here, every detail that you add should serve a very specific purpose, when capturing texture we have to design each shadow shape which forces us to think about how each textural form exists in 3D space. This is the reason why we don’t use any hatching, as it serves more as decoration and does not force you to engage as much in spatial reasoning as implicit mark making does.

I also want to quickly redirect you to this image that shows that when we design each shadow's shape and then fill it we achieve a more dynamic result than simply drawing lines.

-I also want to talk a little about lineweight, given the limitations in the tools and techniques we are using here, it is better to use lineweight on the specific part where form overlap, instead of adding it to the entire silhouette of a whole form. This is better exemplified in this diagram which shows how to apply it in the context of two overlapping leaves. The reason why we do this is because lineweight is like contour lines, it is a useful tool but it can work against us. If you end up making the lineweight too thick you will end up taking the solidity of your forms away and turn them into mere graphic and flat shapes, this is not a huge issue with plants, given that their petals and leaves are already flat, but you definitely want to keep this in mind in the following lessons.

-Remember to respect the boundaries you have set for your leaves, taking a look at this page for example, you drew some leaves, but they extend further than the boundaries that you had initially set for them, it is important that you respect each step of your construction, you may make a few mistakes but they don’t take away from the things you will learn

-Lastly, remember to take your time to design each individual bump and cut, just like you did with your page of leaves, I see some cases where you are slipping into zigzagging the edge details, a good example would be this Autumn Clematis that you drew, as explained in this section of lesson 3, this result in a weaker relationship between each step of the construction method

Okayy, that should be about everything I wanted to call out. Keep up the great work. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete.