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

Arrows

Let's start by talking about your arrows, your lines are looking confident and smooth which helps you communicate the sense of fluidity that arrows have as they move through the world. You're making good use of the depth of the page, and it's good that you're making use of hatching and added lineweight at the top of overlaps in order to reinforce the depth in your arrows.

Sometimes the placement of your hatching is incorrect which disrupts the illusion of perspective you wish to achieve in this exercise.

• Due to the way perspective works objects will appear bigger when closer to the viewer and smaller when further away, even if they're the exact same size. The way this affects an object of consistent size moving through space means that parts of it will look bigger, and others will look smaller based on the perspective of the scene and how close each part of that object is to the viewer, according to this logic this means that the smaller part of the arrow segment should always be the part getting the hatching.

Leaves

Onto your leaves the fluidity present in your arrows translates nicely to these new objects, they're looking very energetic as you don't only capture how these objects sit statically within space, but also how they move across it from moment to moment.

Your usage of the complex leaf construction method is nicely done and helps you create much tighter looking structures.

Your application of edge detail is pretty much non-existent in this page, but it's good that you make use of it more often in your plant construction pages, keep in mind that edge detail is another step of the construction process and not optional, only the last part of the construction process, texture, is optional. Edge detail is also an important step in order to construct the smaller parts of your leaf structure, so make sure to always make use of it.

The way in which you're approaching texture so far is pretty good, you're thinking about the cast shadows and how to represent it in your work, instead of only thinking observationally.

Branches

Moving onto your branches they're coming along decently, although it seems like you haven't always followed the methodology for how your edges are to be laid out.

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

You have some signs of hesitation in your lines, remember that above all in order to create solid looking structures it's important that you maintain confidence in your lines, always ghost from the shoulder as many times as necessary before executing a mark, be it a line or an ellipse.

It's good that you're drawing through your ellipses twice, as that'll allow to draw a more confident and solid structure, just make sure to execute them swiftly in order to avoid wobbling.

Plant Construction Section

Now let's talk about your plant constructions, in general you've done a fantastic job with them, you're making use of the construction methods and techniques which allows you to create really solid and tridimensional looking structures, you're clearly developing a strong sense of spatial reasoning through the use of these exercises.

There are only a couple of minor points that I'd like to mention that I believe will help you in your next attempts at these exercises.

Firstly you mentioned how your last page was your 5th attempt at those particular mushroom constructions, which leads me to think of the possibility that other pages were also not your first attempt. Remember that as mentioned back in Lesson 0 in order to get the most out of the course you should only do the amount of work that is requested, as it's requested, do not grind, as it's much more important that you show you understand these concepts and how they work, rather than make your work look visually pleasing.

Sometimes you go a bit too heavy with your lineweight, such as for this mushroom in your last page. It's important to be subtle with your lineweight, when you add it to entire silhouettes of forms it tends to smooth the distinction between the forms too much, instead, lineweight should be subtle, focused on clarifying the distinction between how the forms overlap one another.

It's good to see that you're drawing plant pots around a minor axis and constructing them, you can push this even further by constructing the rim you can find in most plant pots as well.

Avoid filling in huge areas of black such as in here as they can obscure your initial construction, making your work harder to critique, it's also important to remember that big areas of black go against the principles of drawing texture implicitly, as filled in areas of black should be reserved or cast shadows only, but you also use them for form shadows, which should be avoided in this course.

Texture in the context of this course is an extension of the concepts of construction. With construction focusing on the big and primitive forms that make up different objects, and texture focusing on conveying to the viewer the small forms that run along the surface of an object, essentially texture is a way that you can visually communicate to the viewer what it would feel like to run their hands across that object's surface.

None of this has to do with decorating any of our drawings, what we draw here is based on what's physically present in our construction. As introduced here we should focus on each individual form and how it casts a shadow on neighboring surfaces, understanding how each individual form sits on a 3D space, and closely analyzing all of this information present in our reference to be able to translate it to our study.

The shape of this shadow is important as it's the shape that defines the relationships between the form casting it and the surface it's being cast on, only after careful observation can we understand how to best design a shadow shape that best conveys the texture of an object, as well as how that shadow would be affected by the surface it's being casted on, as a shadow casted on a rounded will be rounded, while a shadow on a plain smooth surface will suffer less distortion to it's original shape.

This approach is of course much harder than basing our understanding of texture on other methods that may seem more intuitive, but in the long run this method of texture is the one who enforces the ideas of spatial reasoning taught in this course. By following these ideas and as you keep applying it to your work, you'll find yo urself asking how to convey the texture in the most efficient way possible, with less lines and ink, focusing more on the implicit mark-making techniques introduced in Lesson 2. Going forward here are a couple of final reminders of how texture in Drawabox should be approached.

Final Thoughts

You're doing really well already, you only need to focus on a couple of weakness and you'll be able to take your work to the next level. I've got no doubt that you'll be able to tackle the challenges present in the next lesson, as such I'll be marking this submission as complete. Good luck in Lesson 4.