12:22 AM, Friday October 30th 2020
Starting with your arrows, you're doing a good job of drawing these such that they flow smoothly and confidently through space. One minor point I want to mention though is that when you use hatching lines as you've done here, it's best to draw them between two specific locations - for example, between two concrete edges, rather than having them stop at an arbitrary distance. This isn't necessarily the case with hatching done with, say, ballpoint or graphite, but with fineliner due to how the tool behaves, it's best to adhere to this as a general rule.
Continuing onto your leaves, you've done a good job of carrying over the confidence and fluidity of your arrows. As such, you're establishing not only how those leaves sit in space, but also how they move through the space they occupy. I'm also pleased to see the manner in which you've built up more complex edges, building directly on top of the previous phase of construction. You may also want to explore more complex leaf structures on your own, however, to familiarize yourself with how this technique can be used to tackle leaves that are not limited to this level of simplicity.
For your branches, I have just one minor point - make sure that you extend your edge segments fully halfway to the next ellipse, ensuring that you have a more considerable overlap between that segment and the next one. As shown here, this overlap is key to getting them to transition more smoothly and seamlessly from one to the next.
Moving onto your plant constructions, you have largely done a good job, though I do have some recommendations as you move forwards:
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Be careful with the size of your drawings. There are cases where you're drawing larger, and cases where you're drawing smaller. Drawing smaller can be tricky due to how our brains benefit from being given more room to think through spatial problems, and it is also easier to engage our whole arm while drawing. Drawing smaller can result in clumsier linework, and more limited capacity to understand the forms we're drawing as they exist in 3D space. It's not something I noticed as a huge problem here, but definitely something to keep in mind as you move forwards.
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As shown here, when you have a 3D form that has volume of its own (so not a flat petal/leaf), you cannot cut back into its silhouette without causing it to appear flat. Petals and leaves are exempt from this simply because they're already flat. So in a situation like the one depicted, you would create a solid form, and then cover it with little petals, wrapping them around this solid form, not attempting to undermine the solidity of the form. Also, note the way my marks are little V's, because I'm not drawing the outline of those individual petal forms - I'm drawing the shadows they cast on their surroundings, as discussed back in lesson 2's texture section.
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As shown here, there can sometimes be a tendency to skip over intermediary steps in construction. Always remember that you want to ensure that the complexity you add in a given phase of construction must be supported by the structure that is already present. If there isn't enough to support it, then tone it down and try to build up the kind of structure you will need, breaking things into more individual steps.
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Also in regards to that last one, note that you do not redraw your edges in every subsequent phase of construction - you only draw the parts that change.
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The bottom left of this page shows that when it comes to texture, you may be confusing it with the idea of "decoration". The drawings we do within this course have a very specific focus. They're exercises in spatial reasoning and visual communication, and as such, every part of the process is focused heavily on what we're communicating. With construction, we communicate to the viewer what they need to know to understand how they might manipulate a given object in space. With texture, we communicate 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. It is not just random marks we're putting down arbitrarily - we are implying the presence of actual 3D information, of little textural forms - again, as discussed in lesson 2.
So! With those points laid out, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Be sure to continue working on these things as you move onto the next lesson.
Next Steps:
Feel free to move onto lesson 4.