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

Arrows

Your arrows have a great sense of perspective applied to them and you're executing your linework with confidence and it's coming along really nicely, this translates well to your arrows and helps to communicate the flow they have as they move across the page.

Your hatching is well executed and correctly placed, but sometimes as your hatching gets further away from the bends it starts to end at the halfway point of the arrow's width. Remember that the hatching should go from one side of the arrow to the other, not end at arbitrary places.

You've done a fantastic job in this exercise, the only things I can mention are that it would be great to see you pushing the perspective and overlaps in your arrows even further by diminishing the amount of negative space between each one, as well as to remember to add lineweight to help reinforce the overlaps as sometimes you forget this step.

Leaves

Your sense of flow carries over nicely to some of your leaves, but others are looking a little bit stiff, such as this one so remember to always execute your marks confidently. You also didn't fully construct the leaf underneath as the flow line is drawn lighter and a part of the outer edge is missing at the section where it would be obscured by the leaf on top.

Our main objective when tackling these exercises is to develop our sense of spatial reasoning, as such all of our forms must be drawn fully, even if they wouldn't normally be visible. This is also a problem I've noticed in your plant constructions.

Onto your edge detail you add it nicely when it's wavy or curved, but for sharper, more triangular details you fall into the habit of zigzagging your lines, such as in this leaf and this leaf. This goes against the third principle of mark making from lesson 1 and is something you generally want to avoid. Take the time to carefully think about your edge detail and make sure no line is trying to capture more than one "bump" at a time, always constructing it additively instead of subtractively when possible.

And lastly onto your textures, you're often using explicit textures for your leaves, when you should be remembering to draw implicitly. Here and here are a couple of reminders on how texture is used in drawabox.

Branches

You're not following all of the instructions for this exercise. When tackling branches keep in mind their characteristics, simple cylinders of consistent width with no foreshortening. You also need to extend your lines, they should be approached by starting a segment at our first ellipse, drawing a line past the second ellipse, and stopping halfway to the third, with the next segment restarting the pattern from the second ellipse until you finish your entire branch.

Sometimes you also forget to draw through your ellipses twice, especially your smaller ellipses.

Plant Construction Section

Onto your plant constructions these are generally coming out very well. I can see that you're thinking in 3D and starting your plants from simple forms first, which helps give them depth and a good sense of tridimensionality.

There are a couple of minor issues here and there that must be pointed out however.

Firstly remember that Drawabox's goal is to help you develop your sense of spatial reasoning, as such you must pay attention to the instructions and follow them closely, this includes the number and specifications for the homework assigned as 4 of your plant constructions should've been submitted with no detail.

You're still not using the branch construction method and you must also draw through all of your forms and always construct them in full. Sometimes you skip this step such as in here where you don't draw the stem attaching to the back end of the flower, where you also don't use the forking branches method.

• Also a reminder not to draw your initial construction lighter and then go back over it's entire sillhoute with addedlineweight. Drawing lighter tends to make one think of drawabox exercises as sketching, but that's not our goal and what we're doing here is not sketching, we're working through exercises created with the purpose of developing our sense of spatial reasoning, therefore all steps of the construction process must be given equal importance by being drawn in the same rich shade of black to reinforce the idea that all of these lines contribute to the construction.

Don't forget not to cut back into your initial construction.

• You do this in the cap of your mushroom in the first page and when adding edge detail to your sunflower. Cutting back into your initial construction instead of working additively undermines your original construction and flattens it.

Remember to construct cylindrical objects around a minor axis, this includes mushroom caps, pots and vases. The cactus you drew would also fit this category due to it's general cylindrical body.

I've noticed a couple of issues with your attempt at the potato plant demo, in the actual demonstration for this plant the area that's filled in with black is basically so densely packed with leaves and branches that the cast shadows are completely covering the ground between the gaps that would otherwise show the dirt underneath, that's what those black areas signify in the demo. But in your potato plant the camera angle is different and the shadows don't all line up, suggesting that you may be misinterpreting these black areas as some kind of arbitrary artistic choice.

I've also noticed that in your leaves for this page you're making your cast shadows unnaturaly stick to the forms that cast them, remember that cast shadows are shadows that are projected on top of neighboring surfaces.

• This is actually where lineweight comes into place, in the case of too many parts of the construction process being on top of the other, we make use of lineweight as outlined [here] (https://drawabox.com/lesson/250boxes/1/overlaps) to define where the forms sit in space in relation to one another.

So do remember to follow the demos as closely as possible.

• Your pages are looking a little bit too empty and your constructions are on the smaller side, this space could have been better used much by drawing bigger, such as drawing this mushroom and this potato plant bigger would have allowed your brain more room to work through the spatial reasoning challenges that arise when tackling these exercises, it would also give you enough space to fully engage your shoulder.

And the last point I'd like to address is your use of texture, while you apply it well to your mushrooms, you're often falling back on drawing them explicitly, especially when it comes to leaves as mentioned beforehand, so don't forget to look over the notes provided in the leaves section of this critique.

Final Thoughts

Your work here is pretty good and you're clearly developing a strong sense of 3D. But you're falling short on a couple of concepts here by not being attentive to the lesson material, for example when you construct this leaf you use the complex leaf construction method correctly, which leads me to believe you're generally understanding the concepts introduced in this lesson, but you're not always applying them to your homework, so remember to just be more careful when following these exercises.

I'm going to be marking this lesson as complete, don't forget to add these exercises to your warmup list and keep practicing them there. Good luck in lesson 4.