Hello DrawingDad11, I'm ThatOneMushroomGuy and I'll be the TA handling your critique today.

Arrows

Starting with your arrows your lines are looking fairly confident and smooth, which helps communicate a nice sense of fluidity in your arrows as they move through the world. You're keeping foreshortening in mind while constructing your arrows which allows you to make really good use of perspective and the depth of your page, this gives a nice extra layer of tridimensionality to your arrows.

Don't forget to make use of hatching in your arrows, it will help you establish how your arrows twist and turn in space and further your understanding of tridimensional space. As a finishing touch to your arrows don't forget to make use of added line weight on top of the overlaps to reinforce their depth.

In general you're doing well in this exercise, your arrows are looking fluid and tridimensional and there's a good variety in the rates of foreshortening and the way they twist and bend through space, so don't forget to keep tackling this exercise during your warm ups in order take your understanding of arrows and 3D space even further.

Leaves

The linework for your leaves needs some more work, at times it's not as smooth as it could br and has clear signs of hesitation, which goes against principles of mark-making from lesson 1. Remember to keep your linework smooth and confident in order to communicate the fluidity and sense of energy of your leaves.

Your addition of edge detail is generally looking good, as you don't usually attempt to capture more than one piece of edge detail at a time, and you generally keep the line thickness between your phases of construction roughly consistent, but don't forget to construct your edge detail additively as much as possible, that is, on top of your structure, avoid cutting back into the forms you've already drawn as that will cause us to focus too much on manipulating 2d shapes, rather than the 3d edges they represent.

It's good to see that you've experimented with complex leaf structures but remember not to skip construction steps when approaching these more intricate structures.

These structures are looser than they could be, due to the flow lines for the individual "arms" of the complex structures going past the boundaries laid out by the previous phases of construction (the one where you established the simple overall footprint for the structure). The bigger shape establishes a decision being made - this is how far out the general structure will extend - and so the flow lines for the later leaf structures should abide by that.

In general, you've jumped onto complexity way too soon, which made it more difficult for you to give 100? of your energy to every mark you've made. Make sure to master the basics of leaves before jumping onto more complicated constructions.

Branches

Moving on to your branches they are coming along really decently made as you're generally following the instructions for the exercise, but they can still be improved. While it's good to see that you're drawing your edges in segments you're not starting your new segment back at the previous ellipse point and superimposing it on top of the preexisting mark, you're starting your new segments close to where your previous mark ended, which partially removes the healthy overlaps we seek to achieve in these structures.

So remember how branches should be approached, by having your segment start at the first ellipse point, extending it past the second ellipse and fully up 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 this pattern until your entire branch is complete.

For ellipses it's good to see that you're making an attempt to always draw through them twice, as that allows for a smoother mark overall. When it comes to your application of the ellipse degree shift to your branches it can be improved, as it stands your degrees are too consistent and hardly change which is a mistake that flattens your structures. Remember that as a form shifts in relation to the viewer, so will the degree of the ellipses within that structure also shift.

Plant Construction Section

And lastly let’s take a look at your plant constructions, which are coming along really well. You’re following the construction methods from the lesson, and it’s clear that you're building solid, three-dimensional structures. Your spatial reasoning is improving nicely, which is fantastic.

You're on the right track, but there are a few things that are keeping you from reaching your full potential. So here are the points you should keep in mind whenever you tackle these exercises again so that you can continue to develop your skills.

Firstly, don't forget to keep the principles of mark-making in mind. You're went over some of your marks more than once, which hurts the fluidity of your structures. Remember that keeping your marks smooth and confident helps communicate a nice sense of fluidity in your arrows as they move through the world.

I've noticed that for these pages you had a tendency to choose more complex plant structures with lots of elements to them, while this is not necessarily a mistake it can end up limiting your ability to hone your skills and fully become acquaintanced with the construction techniques and methods, choosing some less leafy and more simple structures would have allowed you to focus more on applying the construction techniques and methods to your structures, rather than trying to juggle several elements at once.

Make sure to keep all stages of your construction tight and specific, don't leave gaps in between stages of construction, such as a leaf's flow of line and it's outer edges, they must connect.

Always keep in mind that the construction methods and techniques introduced in this course must always be applied to your work, as they're tools which will help you construct much tighter and solid looking structures, there are times where you deviate from the construction methods by not starting your branches with a minor axis or keeping your drawing your leaf constructions with the correct method. Remember that they're not guidelines or suggestions - they are rules.

In your attempt at the potato plant demo there are a couple of deviations from the instructions for the demo which stopped you from getting the most out of the exercise. In the actual potato demo the part that's filled in with black is basically so densely packed that the shadows fill up the dirt you can see between the gaps - but in your work the camera angle's different, the shadows don't all line up and some of them cling to forms. So make sure to follow the demos more closely.

This structure is looser than it could be, because you skipped construction steps and tried to capture the complex form of the structure right away, instead of constructing each individual arm with the leaf construction method and only then connecting them together. Even though leaves are single entities they can still made be made up of several parts.

And lastly, let's take a look at your textures, where your work is starting to move in the right direction, but there are some times where it's looking very explicit because you attempt to fully outlining your textures, such as in here and here, this goes against the idea of drawing texture implicitly since you don't always design your shadows with a specific purpose in mind.

Remember that in Drawabox, texture isn’t about making your work look pretty. Instead, it’s about accurately representing what’s physically present in your reference. The goal is to understand how each form exists in 3D space and how it casts shadows on surfaces. By analyzing the reference closely, you'll be able to translate it into your construction.

The shape of the shadow is important because it shows the relationship between the form and the surface it’s on. We need to think carefully about how to design a shadow shape that feels dynamic and communicates 3D space effectively. It’s harder than just focusing on making your work look nice, but this method will help you strengthen your spatial reasoning skills.

By following this approach, you’ll focus on conveying texture more efficiently, using fewer lines and less ink, while sticking to the mark-making techniques from Lesson 2. Take some time to review the reminders to solidify your understanding of texture.

Final Thoughts

In general you are doing well and your work is looking good, you're starting to understand the purpose of these techniques and exercises and making use of them in your work effectively, as such you demonstrate that your sense of spatial reasoning is developing really nicely. Just don't forget to pay closer attention to each structure you construct in order to draw it thoroughly and get the most out of the structure.

I'm going to be marking this lesson as complete. Good luck in Lesson 4.