Lesson 3: Applying Construction to Plants

8:24 PM, Monday June 1st 2020

Draw A Box Lesson 3- Vinesh - Album on Imgur

Direct Link: https://i.imgur.com/4vLYO9B.jpg

Post with 8 views. Draw A Box Lesson 3- Vinesh

This lesson was particularly mentally taxing. I hope to slowly build the resolve and tenacity to draw them better. I have trouble representing certain forms such as the folds of the cactus. I look forward to your critique and I thank you for your time and advice

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11:18 PM, Monday June 1st 2020

Starting with your arrows, these definitely capture a good sense of motion and fluidity to how they move through space, but one thing I'm noticing is that the negative space between the zigzagging sections does not appear to receive the same kind of perspective-compression as the positive space does. If you look at the ribbons themselves, they get narrower at a certain rate - but the distances between those zigzagging sections do not themselves get narrower as they should. Remember that perspective applies across the board, evenly. Doing so will help better convey a sense of depth in the scene.

Moving onto your leaves, you've definitely continued to capture an excellent sense of fluidity here, and are doing a great job of capturing how the leaves move through the space they occupy - instead of just how the leaves exist statically in space. One thing I do want to emphasize that in most cases, you should be avoiding any use of hatching lines altogether. There are very specific cases where it's okay - and they all involve drawing simple, geometric forms/elements rather than objects that actually have some kind of surface texture to them. Whenever you get into something that represents an actual object, leave hatching alone, for the reasons explained here. It'll only distract you from the core of what you're meant to be accomplishing.

I am also pleased with how you adhere to the principles of construction - when you add more complex edge detail, you do so by sticking to the edge from the previous phase of construction, rather than treating the structure in place as more of a rough sketch or a suggestion. By adhering closely to it, you're able to build up something that feels more solid. Well done.

Moving onto your branches, these are generally well done. You're getting your individual segments to flow into one another seamlessly as discussed in the instructions, which is great. The only thing I want you to keep working on is to try and achieve a more consistent, even width across the whole of the branch forms. Avoid any kind of pinching or swelling, as this added complexity will serve to undermine the solidity of the resulting form.

Now, moving onto your plant constructions, you're mostly doing a pretty good job, with some areas that can certainly be improved. In general, you're doing a really good job of applying the principles of construction, as you did with your leaves. You're building things up gradually, ensuring that there's always appropriate scaffolding to support the next level of complexity.

There are a few places where you don't quite do this as much as you could, but they're quite minor - for example, here where in red I've marked in how your leaf should have initially started. On that point, with the plant in question, the center "flow" lines of your leaves have a lot more wavering in them than they should. Remember that the flow line is all about determining how that leaf moves through 3D space - this is usually achieved with a smooth, confident stroke - one that I'll often add a little arrow-head to in order to remind myself of how it's a representation of motion. The leaves on this page are definitely much better in this regard.

Another minor point - when drawing any form that involves a lot of ellipses being aligned to one another (for example, flower pots), make sure you construct them around a minor axis line.

Another point worth mentioning is that with this plant, I can see some underlying strokes that were drawn very faintly. The marks themselves were fine - you laid out underlying structure and then built the rest of your construction around it. That's a correct approach. The only issue is that you should not be purposely trying to hide anything in your drawings in this manner. Every mark you feel contributes to your construction should be drawn confidently, rather than timidly and faintly. Remember that these drawings are themselves just exercises - the end result and making it something clean and pretty is not a concern. All that matters is deciding whether or not the marks you draw contribute to the construction and your understanding of the forms involved.

To that point, note how here you should be drawing each and every form in its entirety - instead of letting those lines stop where another form overlaps them. Drawing everything in its entirety helps us better understand how each form sits in space, and how it relates to its neighbours within that space.

The last thing I want to mention comes down to your approach to adding detail in plants 6 and 7. It seems to me like you may have been somewhat uncertain as to how to approach this, and as a result, you fell back more to rendering and capturing form shading in many cases. Don't forget, that as explained back in Lesson 2, we are not concerned with form shading at all in these drawings. Form shading, especially for its own sake, is just decoration. We are interested in visual communication - that means everything we draw serves a purpose, to communicate some additional information to the viewer. When it comes to detail, it's all about conveying more information about the surface of our forms. We do this by identifying the little textural forms along the surfaces and capturing the shadows they'd cast on their surroundings. Again - revisit the Lesson 2 material on this, as I think you've let a lot of that slip.

One last thing on this topic. On plant 7, you are somewhat misusing line weight. Again - a detailed drawing is not about covering all your "real lines" with additional line weight, and being this heavy with your line weight will have a tendency to flatten out your drawing by turning them into highly graphic shapes. Line weight should always be subtle - just focusing on making slight changes in thickness that your subconscious will pick up on. It's like a whisper, rather than a shout. Line weight should also only ever be applied to limited sections of linework, to emphasize lines that already exist, rather than replacing and tracing over lines. Tracing is especially dangerous because it causes us to focus on how those lines run along the page, rather than how they move through three dimensions. When adding line weight, always use the same pen you used when drawing the original lines. Don't reach for a thicker one.

So! Overall, you're doing quite well, but there are a number of things you need to keep on top of, and I think you should definitely review the texture material from Lesson 2. That said, you should be good to move on, so I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete.

Next Steps:

Feel free to move onto lesson 4.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
6:05 AM, Tuesday June 2nd 2020

Thank you for the feedback, I certainly had a lot of problems representing lines that appeared straight in the reference image. I'm definitely struggling with texture as I find myself just covering the page with ink before I can establish any detail. I'll start doing the 25 texture challenge parallel with lesson 4.

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