Hello again Kort! Congrats on finishing Lesson 3! I'll be critiquing your submission today.

Organic Arrows

These look good! The page is filled up nicely with twisting ribbons that flow believably through the page. No real criticisms here, good work.

Leaves

I like this page too. You experimented with a variety of leaf shapes and sizes, all of which bend and flow nicely around their center-lines. The only critique I would add here would be to include some additional intermediate phases to delineate the bounds for stems with multiple leaves, as detailed in this section of the instructions for the Leaves exercise. Your leaves look great but some of the more complex structures lack the outer bounding curves that the constructional process for this exercise specifies to use. Otherwise great work here.

Branches

You’ve done a good job of filling the page and experimenting with a mix of shallow/dramatic curves here! I have two notes:

1. the degrees of your contour ellipses are a little inconsistent and lack variety - to convey a sense of appropriate perspective and solidity, it helps to have more narrow degrees at the cross-sections which are closer to the viewer, and wider degrees at those further away (refer to the image from this section of the instructions for the Branches exercise). I was not able to identify a consistent sense of flow through these branches, which undermined their solidity a bit and flattened them out. Keeping the degree-shifts consistent can help to sell the illusion of 3-dimensionality more.

2. Many of your strokes seemed to truncate earlier than halfway between the next two ellipses. While this is not exclusively true, there were enough sections of your branches that seemed to fall short of their intended mark that I would refer to this section of the instructions for the Branches exercise again – specifically where he talks about drawing past the next ellipse when constructing our compound strokes. I've highlighted one instance of this here. I can see an attempt being made to rectify this in many of your other branches, and I don’t think the mistakes are severe enough to warrant revisions, but I do still think it’s worth bringing up here; just keep this point in mind as you continue to practice drawing branches.

Plant Constructions

Good googly moogly! You really went above and beyond here – I’m immensely impressed with your initiative. Most submissions have one plant per page, maaybe two or three. I’ve never seen a submission this full! It’s clear these were not hastily done either – you certainly did not sacrifice quality for the sake of quantity.

On your branches, I would echo my notes above – if the branch bends to face the viewer, widen the degree as it curves, and remember to draw past your ellipses when making compound strokes. Otherwise, your branches feel solid and have a consistent width throughout. They are capped appropriately and there is a good mix of straight and curved branches. Your petals come in many shapes, sizes, and varieties – you’ve done an excellent job of trying lots of different shapes at lots of different perspectives. These all flow nicely around their center-lines and curve consistently away from their origin. Moreover, the general constructions feel believable and solid. I particularly like how your sunflower turned out – you paid respect to the forms on the back of the bud that you cannot see directly, and considered how their presence affects the forms that you can see. Your mushrooms and cactuses look great, as do your leafy ferns and bushes.

Closing thoughts

Overall, this is a very strong submission that clearly demonstrates an understanding of and proficiency with the lesson material. Any criticisms I’ve levied should be considered along with the understanding that you knocked this one out of the park. Well done!