Hi, let me try to give you some critique. Hope this helps!

First, I wanted to touch upon the use of detail/texture within this lesson (and for the rest of the course), since it's something that spans across every exercise here except the arrows. I'm not an official critic, but the way I see it, there are two reasons that the first four pages are required to be construction only:

• Detail often obscures the underlying construction, and in some cases may be used to correct things even if the underlying construction is incorrect. While I can often see how something is constructed if there are only lines involved, it's a lot harder to do so when significant parts are covered in black or texture.

• When people go into an exercise wanting to add detail and texture, they sometimes rush through the earlier steps since there's more work to do, much like how some people spend less time per line if they're constructing a box vs just a single line. Ultimately, the construction is most important, and so the first few pages are construction only to ease into the mindset of spending enough time on construction.

The other thing related to texture is that in this course, black areas should only capture cast shadows, including on texture. Now it's hard to tell for sure without reference, but some of the textural forms must be truly massive to capture the big blocks of shadow represented, so it seems like the blocks of black are either negative space or capturing form shadows.

Arrows

In the arrows exercise, your arrows do a generally good job of flowing through space. There's a few places where the arrow doesn't bend where expected, the bottom left arrow for example, and while the arrow does get narrower as it goes into the distance, the negative space doesn't similarly decrease. Remember that even if you are shrinking the distance between lengths of the arrow as it goes into the distance, the arrow itself is also getting narrower, so you really have to exaggerate the shrinking. Finally, a small thing: arrows turning on itself and arrows in 1 point perspective are good to practice, but they're ultimately not too useful for constructing leaves (which is ultimately what this practice is about). Most of your arrow practice should probably involve arrows just flowing through space in 3 point perspective.

Leaves

Your leaves do capture a good sense of flowing through space. The edge detail is also added well, building upon the previous steps of construction. For the most part, the complex construction is also going well. For the maple leaf and the leaf down and to the right of the maple leaf, you seemed to have skipped the step where you establish a basic shape for the leaf using two simple curves. I think this is what is causing the stiffness I'm seeing in those two leaves, because you don't have a general direction for the leaf built around the flow line.

Branches

Moving over to your branches, these are overall very well done. You properly extend the side lines past the second ellipse and halfway to the third, and vary the degrees of the ellipses to capture a sense of the branch flowing through space. Just keep in mind that if you have multiple branches joined together as one composition, that the degrees of the ellipses should vary consistently according to a single viewpoint. Also, a small thing: if you're adding a mass to join another branch on, there's no need to put an ellipse on the side of the mass unless you're planning on extending a branch in that direction.

Plant Constructions

You are doing a pretty good job on these plant constructions, especially the ones that follow the demo. There are some notable issues that I would like to point out:

• For the flower on the right side of page 1 (next to the daisy), I believe that you are drawing the petals a bit small, which is causing them to appear a bit messy. If the reference is similar to the daisy, the petals need to be drawn a lot larger. If the petals really are that small on the reference, I would recommend you cut off most of the stem so that you can draw the actual flower larger. Drawing large helps us engage spatial reasoning skills and makes small mistakes more forgiving when constructing. I would also like to mention that there are way too many ellipses in the stem of this flower, it's normal to just add these things when you aren't feeling confident about what you're drawing, but the solution is not to keep adding them, but to spend more time thinking about where they should be added.

• For the plants on page 2, overall the construction is solid. I just want to note that if you want to add small forms along the sides, that they should be added as additional 3-dimensional forms, having them as shapes will flatten out the entire form.

• For your mushrooms, the main thing to keep in mind is that if you are constructing a cylinder, or cylinder like form, always align it to a center axis line. The mushrooms on the right have a stem similar to branches, therefore they should be constructed using the branch construction method. Remember that things like the branch construction method are not meant to be applied to just the things they're introduced as, you should see if the form you're trying to construct is similar, and apply accordingly.

• On the pitcher plants page, it seems like the center axis line is ending up as a contour line in a few of the constructions. You also seem to be overusing contour lines, for this construction, you only really need to define the silhouette of the plant, much like the branches.

• For the potato plants, you seem to be using an excessive amount of line weight. Line weight should only be used where two forms overlap, to clarify which one is on top, and you shouldn't apply it to the whole line, just locally to where the overlap is. Regarding cast shadows here, since you're representing cast shadows with the big black area in the middle, you also need to do so for all the leaves as well. If you're going to apply cast shadow, you need to apply it to the whole composition or else there's going to be conflicting information.

• For the hibiscus, the construction in the middle does not have the petals really respecting the drawn ellipse. Remember that previous steps of construction are not guidelines, or suggestions, they are hard rules that you must follow. Therefore, the petals should end on that ellipse. Regarding the shadows on the left hibiscus, while gradients and blocks of shadow are good to establish textures, the block of shadow is probably a bit too big to do that, and starting to get into form shading territory.

• For the cacti, overall it's constructed very well. Some of the contour lines on the central cactus are a bit straight, so instead of reinforcing the form they end up flattening it instead. But overall, pretty solid constructions.

• For the trees, while they are done well, the techniques for constructing trees are ultimately not taught in this lesson. I would recommend staying away from trees when doing this lesson's material.

Overall, the work here is pretty good. However, there are some notable issues that I think a few revision constructions will help with. I've assigned them below.