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8:09 PM, Saturday August 29th 2020

Starting with your arrows, you've got them flowing very nicely through 3D space, with an excellent sense of motion to them. This is something you do a pretty good job of capturing within your leaves as well, establishing not only how they sit statically within three dimensions, but also how they move through the space they occupy from moment to moment. I'm also pleased to see that where you've approached a little bit of extra edge detail, you've built it directly off the previous phase of construction, rather than treating that underlying phase as something loose, or just a suggestion. This leads to much stronger structure to the resulting leaf, and avoids unnecessary contradictions.

Continuing onto your branches, I did notice immediately that you didn't actually extend your segments fully halfway towards the next ellipse, as shown here in the instructions. This leads to very limited actual overlap between the segments. That overlap is critical for getting the segments to flow smoothly and seamlessly from one to the next, and is at the core of this exercise as a whole. This, along with purposely using the last chunk of the previous segment as a runway, overlapping it directly when drawing the next segment, will help you avoid those little visible tails that diverge from the overall path of the branch's edge as a whole.

Moving onto your plant constructions, overall you've done a pretty decent job. There are a few places where you stray a little from the techniques you've learned thus far however, which I will point out, but overall your grasp of the major concepts are coming along well.

The first one that jumped out at me was with the rose and cabbage drawings, first and foremost because you only drew each little petal or leaf insofar as it was not blocked or overlapped by another. One important aspect of constructional drawing is the stress we put on drawing every single form in its entirety, regardless of what exists between it and the viewer. When it is blocked from view, it does not cease to exist - it continues to sit there in the world, relating to the other forms around it. As such, it's important for us to draw it in its entirety, to understand how it sits within space, and how it relates to its neighbours. The focus is not on avoiding clutter. Often times, clutter will occur, and you'll gradually get better at sorting through the mess of lines. The focus is that every one of these drawings is itself an exercise in spatial reasoning, and so we always need to make choices to that end and goal, not towards making a drawing cleaner or prettier.

Looking at the cactus on the left side of this page, I noticed that you drew some lines running along the length of the main trunk. Now, this is obviously in an attempt to capture the ridges that exist along the length of this form - ridges that are themselves part of the cactus' texture, and therefore that should have been drawn (if at all) using the techniques covered back in lesson 2. Remember that texture should always be captured through the cast shadows created by the forms that run along the surface of the overall object, not through the use of line. To help you avoid this, adhering to this two-step process whenever drawing any kind of a textural mark can help.

For the drawing on the right side of that page, remember that any cylindrical form that involves a series of ellipses, is best constructed around a central minor axis line. Also, there you've got the ellipse closer to the viewer (the top of the pot) drawn with a larger degree than the farther end (the base of the pot), which is incorrect. This was gently introduced in the form intersections exercise in lesson 2 (specifically this step), but you can learn more about how cylinders work in the cylinder challenge's notes.

The only other issue worth mentioning was already addressed - the issue with the branches exercise affected your other drawings, like the pitcher plant demo, resulting sharper bends at various points instead of a steady, smooth path. As such, before I mark this lesson as complete, I'm going to assign a couple more pages of the branches exercise for you to use to get the technique down a little better.

Next Steps:

Please submit 2 additional pages of the branches exercise.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
12:35 AM, Sunday August 30th 2020

Follow up

Thanks for the feedback! when i drew my rose, i was so lost in the clutter of lines that i swayed off of drawing every element fully. Next time ill draw them all, using line weights and shadows to define the lines as im going. Thanks!

1:55 AM, Sunday August 30th 2020

Much better! I'll go ahead and mark the lesson as complete.

Next Steps:

Feel free to move onto lesson 4.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
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Faber Castell PITT Artist Pens

Faber Castell PITT Artist Pens

Like the Staedtlers, these also come in a set of multiple weights - the ones we use are F. One useful thing in these sets however (if you can't find the pens individually) is that some of the sets come with a brush pen (the B size). These can be helpful in filling out big black areas.

Still, I'd recommend buying these in person if you can, at a proper art supply store. They'll generally let you buy them individually, and also test them out beforehand to weed out any duds.

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