Hello Arahel85, I'm ThatOneMushroomGuy and I'll be the TA handling your critique today.

I'm happy to see that despite what you've felt after recieving your first critique of this lesson, that you've decided to stick with the course and with drawing.

While I can't comment on this myself, I've passed the message on to Uncomfortable.

Now without further ado, let's get to your critique.

Arrows

Starting with your arrows they're looking quite smooth due to the confidence which they're drawn, this helps push the feeling of fluidity arrows have as they move through the world.

Make sure to carefully think through the placement of your hatching, currently you sometimes add it to the incorrect side of the arrow bend, making it look like the side that is smaller is the one that is on top and thus closer to the viewer, but this contradicts the illusion of depth you wish to achieve with these objects.

• Perspective works by having objects appear bigger when closer to the viewer and smaller when further away, even if they're the exact same size. Following this logic, an object of consistent size moving through space will have segments that are closer to the viewer bigger, and segments that are further away will gradually get smaller, as such the bigger segment of the arrow will always be the one that's closest to the viewer, and the segment behind it should be the one getting the hatching.

As a finishing touch, don't forget to always make use of lineweight in order to reinforce arrow's overlaps.

Leaves

Moving onto your leaves you're doing a good job of keeping the initial construction lines confident which is helping push the feeling of fluidity and energy that leaf structures possess, you're not only capturing how these objects sit statically within space, but also how they move across the world.

The energy in your leaves is slightly diminished however due to the later lines which are added on top of your initial construction, if they're contour lines it's better to forego them, they don't help communicate any more information than your original construction already communicates and their hesitancy hurts the solidity of the construction, and if they're supposed to be texture you're not really following the concepts of texture introduced in Lesson 2. You can find here some good notes on how leaf's texture works.

Your application of edge detail is generally looking good as you're not trying to capture more than one piece of detail at a time. But do keep in mind that edge detail should generally be added additionally, and that it should be added with roughly the same line thickness as your previous lines, in order to maintain the illusion of solidity in your construction as well as to not encourage you to redraw more than you strictly need to.

Lastly, you can find here some good notes on how to approach leaf construction subtractively when executing it additionally becomes unavoidable.

Branches

Your branches are coming along decently, although there are a couple of issues you should work on in order to get even more out of this exercise.

Good job on extending lines, but I've noticed that you're not completely consistent in the addition of this step of the exercise, extending some lines for longer than they should be extended and not fully extending some of them to the halfway point between ellipses.

Remember how branches should be approached, by having your segment start at the first ellipse, extending it past the second ellipse and extending it fully to the halfway point to the third ellipse, afterwards you'll start a new segment, making sure to place your pen at the second ellipse and repeat the pattern until your branch is complete.

For your ellipses, make sure that you're always drawing through them twice.

Plant Construction Section

Let's move on to your plant constructions, you're moving in the right direction and your constructions are looking pretty tridimensional, you're showing a lot of potential and starting to grasp the concepts that this lesson seeks to teach as your work here is a big improvement over your original attempt at this lesson.

I'd like to offer you a couple of pointers, I believe that if you take a moment to address these issues you'll continue to gain even more out of these exercises.

Firstly there's definitely a lot of information found in this course, it's incredibly dense and packed full of knowledge. But do try your best to always keep in mind the techniques and methods introduced previously in the lesson. For example, you're rarely drawing through your ellipses, especially the ones on the smaller side, and it's good to see that you're attempting to extend your lines, but sometimes you're not following the complete instructions in the branches exercise by starting your new segment on top of your last line, instead of starting it at the ellipse point and trying to superimpose it on top of your extended line.

This is incredibly minor, but I heavily recommend that when you follow along any demos in this course, that you follow it completely, including the texturing parts, while texture is optional for these pages, it still follows the principles of construction and thinking of your marks on the page as solid forms, understanding texture will help with developing your sense of spatial reasoning.

There are a couple of places, such as here and in here where you're adding incredibly thick lineweight on top of your constructions, this inconsistency between different phases of construction reminds the viewer that they're looking at lines on a page, and disrupts the relationships between the different forms. Keep in mind that lineweight should only be used to differentiate between overlaps, and added with a single, confident stroke superimposed on top of the overlap.

When you commit to a piece of construction, you must commit to it thoroughly, I've noticed in your hibiscus demo that there are a couple of textural shapes in one of the petals, but not in the others.

Don't leave arbitrary gaps between your leaf structure's flow line and the outer edges, this undermines their solidity and the relationships the forms have with one another. Make sure to keep your phases of construction tight and specific.

In this construction some of the petals weren't drawn with the leaf construction method and one of them wasn't drawn in it's entirety, make sure to always construct forms fully, the point of these exercises is to develop your sense of spatial reasoning and drawing all of your forms completely will help you in developing your skills.

The same is true for these leaf structures which aren't drawn with the leaf construction method.

Your use of texture in this lesson is often times being added very explicitly, you're moving in the right direction and seem to have the right idea of it, but I'd like to address it regardless. Texture in the context of this course is an extension of the concepts of construction, with construction being focused on the big and primitive forms that make up different structures and texture focusing on communicating the small forms that run along the surface of an object, essentially texture is a way of visually communicating to the viewer what it would feel like to run their hands across that surface.

None of this has to do with decorating any of our drawings, what we draw here is based on what's physically present in our construction. As introduced here, we can notice that we should focus on each individual form and how it casts a shadow on neighboring surfaces, understanding how each individual form sits on a 3D space, and analyzing all of this information present in our reference to be able to translate it to our study. The shape of this shadow is important as it's the shape that defines the relationships between the form casting it and the surface it's being cast on, as such you should design your shadow shape in a way that feels dynamic, as shown here.

This approach is of course much harder than basing our understanding of texture on other methods that may seem more intuitive, but in the long run this method of texture is the one who enforces the ideas of spatial reasoning taught in this course. By following these ideas, you'll find yourself asking how to convey texture in the most efficient way possible, with less lines and ink, focusing more on the implicit mark-making techniques introduced in Lesson 2. Going forward here are a couple of final reminders of how texture in Drawabox is approached.

Final Thoughts

You're stumbling here and there and struggling to apply some of the instructions as thoroughly as you could, but overall your work is looking solid and tridimensional, make sure to always revisit the lesson material whenever you feel unsure of what the next step is, or to remind yourself of how an exercise should be approached. It's important that you pay close attention not only when reading the lesson material, but also as you apply the methods to your work, give each step of construction as much time and attention as it requires.

I also heavily recommend that you give your exercises more space, some of your constructions are looking a bit squished or almost falling off the page, it's important that you give each of these constructions as much time and space as they require before deciding that you'd like to add another drawing to your page. As of now, sometimes these extra drawings are hurting your ability to fully engage your arm and apply some of the techniques mentioned in the lesson material.

If you address the points brought up here, you'll find that you'll continue to get even more out of this course. I'm going to be marking this lesson as complete. Good luck in Lesson 4.