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

Arrows

Let's start this critique by talking about your arrows, your initial linework is smooth and confident which helps sell the illusion of fluidity that arrows have as they move across the world, however some of this fluidity is taken away because you're adding too many passes of lineweight over your lines, which naturally leaves more room for inaccuracies.

As mentioned here lineweight should be applied on top of your arrow's overlaps, it should also be added subtly, with only a single superimposed line added on top of the previous mark. Don't go overboard with lineweight, it can stiffen your marks and smooth out your construction too much, flattening it.

You're making good use of the depth of the page and it's good to see that you're experimenting with different types of arrows, this is sure to push your understanding of 3d space further, but don't forget to always look out for unatural bends in your arrows which happen when we become afraid of letting edges overlap. One of the most noticeable instances of this in your work is here where there's only a single overlap in the entire arrow. We can mitigate this issue by constructing our arrows in segments, instead of trying to capture the complex curves with one motion we can divide our second mark into smaller pieces, making use of the ghosting method to plan the overlaps and check for any problems before we commit to our marks.

Something else that you should keep in mind is the placement of your hatching, there are a couple of places where you've added it to the incorrect side of the arrow segment which contradicts the illusion of depth you wish to create.

• Due to how perspective works, objects which are closer to the viewer will appear bigger, and smaller as they're further away. Following this logic, the size of an object of consistent size that moves across space must gradually change according to the perspective of the scene. As such, the bigger part of the arrow is always going to be the one closest to the viewer, therefore the smaller part of the segment should be the one that gets the hatching applied to it.

Leaves

Moving onto your leaves your work looks very well made. The fluidity present in your arrows translates nicely into these new structures, you don't only capture how these objects exist statically within space, but you've also considered how they'd move across the world from moment to moment which gives a great sense of energy to your leaves.

Your edge detail is also nicely executed, generally you're adding it in with roughly the same line thickness as the rest of your structure - which is great - and you don't cut into the silhouette of your structures very much, with the exception of when it would be applicable.

In general a very great first shot at this exercise that can be strenghted in the future by focusing on avoiding unnatural folds and attempting different types of leaf structures by tackling more complex leaf structures, as it would have been nice to see you attempt such types of leaves either here or in your plant construction pages.

Branches

Now let's talk about your branches, they're looking pretty decent as you generally follow the instructions for the exercise, but there are a couple of things that when addressed will allow you to create tighter, more solid structures overall.

It's good to see that you're making the effort to approach your edges in segments as that allows us to maintain higher control over our marks, but at times, such as in here you're not completely following the manner in which your edges should be laid out because you didn't start you next segment at the ellipse point, which can leave gaps between your lines and makes it harder to achieve a smooth transition between lines.

So don't forget how branches should be approached, your segments must start at your ellipse points, you must extend your mark past the next ellipse, and stop at the halfway point between that ellipse and the next, with the new segment repeating the pattern until your branch is complete. This helps us maintain control of our marks and allows for a healthy overlap between them.

At times you're redoing lines in your branches, don't do this, it undermines your previous construction and flattens your form as it becomes unclear which mark is the actual line that defines the edge of your form.

Your ellipses are looking good, it's great to see that you're always drawing through them twice which helps you create smooth and confident marks. It's good to see that you seem aware of the ellipse degree shift but some of your degrees are still looking too similar to each other which is a mistake as introduced in the organic forms with ellipses exercise. Remember that a cylindrical form shifts in space so will the degree of it's ellipses change in relation to the viewer.

Plant Construction Section

And finally let's talk about your plant constructions.

Firstly I'd like to mention how it's commendable that you attempted some of the demos on your own, and how you've clearly put so much time into these pages, it's clear that you want to learn and you're willing to put in the effort it requires. However Drawabox's affordable feedback is possible only because the course structure offloads as much responsability as it can onto the students. One of these responsabilities is making sure that you're only completing the amount of material assigned, as it was assigned, since this allows the price of feedback to be kept low by always giving the students the same base amount of exercises to follow and submit for review.

The more pages submitted, the more effort and time it's required of the one reviewing that work, but the amount of credits you spend for the critique itself and the amount Uncomfy and the TAs are paid for it is the same. So make sure to only submit the requested amount of pages, it's the best for you as it also means not doing more work than needed before being able to move on to the next lesson, since these exercises are only a starting point and you'll still be practicing them even after your lesson submission was marked as complete. In the case that your reviewer believes you need to spend more time with these concepts before moving on they will ask you for revisions before allowing you to move on.

I wish to point out that in no way do I want to discourage you, it's admirable how much work you've done and the effort you put into it and you should be proud of yourself for it.

Now let's get to your actual critique.

In general you're making use of the construction methods and techniques introduced in the lesson which is helping you create really solid and tridimensional looking structures, you're clearly developing your sense of spatial reasoning and demonstrating it in these pages, good job! However there are a couple of issues that are present in your pages, and they're holding your work back from it's full potential, here are the things that you should work on in the future in order to get the most out of these pages.

One of the least present but most important issues present in your work, most noticeably in here is that you're not drawing through your forms, that doesn't allow you to make use of the methods introduced in the lesson and flattens your work.

• It's incredibly important for you to draw through all of your forms, as small or as unecessary as you might believe them to be, forms don't stop existing when they become obscured by other forms. Think of it as building a house and having a full X-ray view of the building, it's a tridimensional puzzle that cannot exist before the foundations are laid out, the roof cannot exist before the walls, and the walls cannot exist before the foundation, in that same vein tips of leaves or parts of a construction cannot exist by themselves, they still exist as full forms even when they're partially obscured by other objects.

So always construct forms in their entirety because this will help you develop your sense of spatial reasoning and it'll allow you to understand how these tridimensional puzzles fit together, how your forms exist completely in space and how each part affects and is affected by the surrounding forms. It will also help you create much clearer and well defined relationships between your phases of construction.

A smaller problem found in your pages is that sometimes such as in here you've accidentally cut into your forms, while this is a pretty easy mistake to make and very minimal in your work it can undermine some of the solidity of your forms as it alters their silhouette, in order to avoid this make sure to always construct things additively and to treat your ellipse's outer perimeter as the defining edge of the form.

What are the forms in the background of this construction supposed to be? They don't convey any sense of tridimensionality because they weren't approached with any of the construction techniques shown in the lesson material. Before making any marks on your page think of what the form you wish to construct is meant to communicate, and how the best way of constructing that form would be.

You're adding too much lineweight at times in your work, but lineweight should only be used to clarify overlaps, this is because when you add too much lineweight to your work you can smooth out forms too much and flatten your work, as mentioned previously. Remember that lineweight should be subtle otherwise it will cause your viewers to remember that they're just looking at a drawing, and not a true tridimensional object.

• Make sure to not leave tubes open ended, always cap off your branches and always fully enclose your forms.

The same problems mentioned in your page of branches are still present here.

You're not making correct use of the forking branches method which leaves the relationships between your forms a bit unclear. Remember to always make use of the construction methods introduced.

Moving onto the last part of your critique, your use of texture in this lesson is leaning a bit towards the explicit side and you're letting yourself fall into the habit of making random marks, instead of focusing on the cast shadows formed by forms in the surface of your object.

What we're doing in this course can be broken into two distinct sections - construction and texture - and they both focus on the same concept. With construction we're communicating to the viewer what they need to know to understand how they might manipulate this object with their hands, were it in front of them. With texture, we're communicating to the viewer what they need to know to understand what it'd feel like to run their fingers over the object's various surfaces. Both of these focus on communicating three dimensional information. Both sections have specific jobs to accomplish, and none of it has to do with making the drawing look nice.

Instead of focusing on decoration, what we draw here comes down to what is actually physically present in our construction, just on a smaller scale. As discussed back in Lesson 2's texture section, we focus on each individual textural form, focusing on them one at a time and using the information present in the reference image to help identify and understand how every such textural form sits in 3D space, and how it relates within that space to its neighbours. Once we understand how the textural form sits in the world, we then design the appropriate shadow shape that it would cast on its surroundings. The shadow shape is important, because it's that specific shape which helps define the relationship between the form casting it, and the surface receiving it.

As a result of this approach, you'll find yourself thinking less about excuses to add more ink, and instead you'll be working in the opposite - trying to get the information across while putting as little ink down as is strictly needed, and using those implicit markmaking techniques from Lesson 2 to help you with that. Make sure to go over these reminders in order to solidify your understanding of texture further.

Final Thoughts

Some of your work is good but towards the end it's much poorer, I assume that this is because since you did more work than was requested you ended up rushing through the last pages in order to get it done faster, but unfortunately this only hurt your work and brought down it's quality.

Make sure not to rush, give yourself adequate time and the necessary time to fully commit to each and every construction and exercise that you tackle in this course. Regardless I believe that you're ready to move on to the next lesson as you've shown an adequate understanding of these exercises and techniques, so I'll be marking this submission as complete. Good luck in lesson 4.