Overall, it doesn't seem like you got too rusty in your 7 month break. There are issues, but I suspect they would have been present regardless. That said, just be sure to refresh your memory of the material in the lessons up until now, and be sure to work those exercises back into a regular warmup routine.

Starting with your arrows, you've done a pretty good job of drawing these with a good deal of confidence - although they do stiffen up a little bit where you add line weight, becuase you appear to be adding that line weight a bit more hesitation, likely a bit too preoccupied with ensuring their accuracy. As with everything, remember that accuracy is not your first priority - every mark should be made using the ghosting method, ensuring a confident stroke first and foremost, including line weight. Executing those marks with more confidence will also result in more tapering on the ends of your strokes, which helps them blend back into the original linework.

Moving onto your leaves, you've done a pretty good job of capturing the movement of the leaves as they flow through the space they occupy. When adding more complex edge detail, you've generally done a good job, but I want you to avoid anything singular stroke that cuts across the simpler edge of the leaf, as it did here. That's getting you close to [zigzagging back and forth across the edge](). You want there to be a very clear, grounded relationship between that simpler edge, and the more complex detail. Here it appears you were trying to stick with that, but those individual strokes got a bit too close.

Also, don't draw subsequent phases of construction to be darker or heavier than the previous phases of construction. Line weight is only something you add at the end of a construction to clarify specific overlaps - not to attempt to replace previous phases of construction and make them disappear.

Continuing onto your branches, you've generally done a pretty good job - though there are some spots where you're not quite extending your segments fully halfway to the next ellipse. As shown here, the resulting overlap helps the segments flow more smoothly and seamlessly from one to the next.

Looking at your plant constructions, overall you're doing a decent job, and you're still holding onto that sense of confidence and fluidity when draw your leaves. There are a few things I want to draw to your attention though:

• For this apple it appears you didn't draw through your original ellipse, resulting in a somewhat less even overall shape. The more complex the silhouette, the more difficult it is to have read as a solid, 3D form. Always aim for simplicity. With ellipses, it's all about making them smooth and evenly shaped.

• You're definitely using the right process for these cherry blossoms, and they came out fairly well - but it does stand out to me that you were a little rushed in drawing each one. It's normal to draw more quickly and sloppily when you're drawing a lot of the same object, because it feels like each individual mark matters less in the grand scheme. Despite that, you need to make sure that you take as much time as you need to execute every single mark to the best of your ability. Don't ever give into the temptation to rush through anything, even if it's just by a little bit.

• With these mushrooms, I think you got a little preoccupied with the idea of adding detail meaning "decoration". That's a common misconception about the purposes of the detail phase of the drawings we do here. 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.

• Also, in general avoid making any textural marks as singular, individual strokes. Always draw them as cast shadow shapes, designing their outlines based on what you know about the forms that cast them. Using this two step process for every single textural mark will help you avoid giving into the temptation to just take a shortcut and put a single stroke down.

• A bit more time could definitely have been put into the individual marks for these blueberries - it's just a matter of applying the ghosting method (the three stage process of planning, preparation, execution) for every stroke to ensure that they're done to the best of your current ability. Jumping in with confidence is better than hesitating, certainly, but a little more preplanning will help you keep those ellipses tighter and avoid the slight haphazard arrangement of marks to create a more cohesive, solid result.

• Lastly, grass blades probably weren't the most suitable choice for this lesson. When picking the things you're going to draw for a given lesson, staying within the realm of things that are similar to what's pictured in the demos is probably best. Remember that it's not a lesson on drawing plants (which would imply a lot of variety being ideal) - it's a lesson about constructional drawing, using plants as a lens through which to look at this problem. Blades of grass didn't really give you a lot to work with here, in terms of structure, or complexity to build up towards.

Overall you're headed in the right direction. I'm going to go ahead and mark this lesson as complete - but expect things to get more complex in the next lesson, demanding more care in the planning of your marks, and more time spent observing and studying your references to identify the complexity that lies therein.