Starting with the arrows, you're doing a great job here of constructing them with a strong sense of fluidity and movement, which carries over quite nicely into your leaves exercises, capturing not only how they occupy space but also how they move through it. One thing that did stand out here however was just the sheer thickness of the pen you used. I'm assuming you just grabbed whatever you had on hand at the time, but this is definitely way outside the bounds of what is requested for the lesson.

In terms of the leaves themselves, there is just one issue I want to point out - when adding the last little bit of edge detail, you tend to do so by zigzagging a line back and forth across the previous phase of construction, effectively replacing that edge rather than building upon it. I talk about this in these notes, so be sure to give them another read. Also, remember that this kind of zigzagging breaks this principle of markmaking from Lesson 1.

In the future, add this kind of detail by only adding one spike or bump/wave at a time, having it come off the simpler edge of the leaf and return to it.

Continuing onto your branches, your linework here was admittedly a little erratic at times - make sure that you're drawing from your shoulder, especially considering your bout with carpal tunnel. Doing so will help you avoid injuring yourself further, and will also make your lines smoother and less wobbly. To the same end, every mark you draw should be drawn with confidence, and if you make a mistake, do not go back over it to correct it. I'm unsure of precisely why I'm seeing entirely different thicknesses of lines in some of your branches - some of which appear like they might be from a totally different pen - but regardless this should not be an aspect of this exercise.

Additionally, I noticed that you frequently neglected to extend your line segments fully halfway to the next ellipse. This is important because it allows a significant overlap between the segments, which in turn lets them transition more smoothly and seamlessly from one to the next, as shown here.

Stepping through your plant constructions, the core aspects of the lesson are generally done fairly well (although the issues I addressed above still do come up, like zigzagging your edge detail), but the only main thing I want to talk about is the process you're using as a whole.

As I mentioned before, I'm seeing lines that appear to be coming from entirely different pens - a thinner one for the core construction, and then a thicker one to then go back over the whole drawing, replacing those underlying construction lines in favour of a cleaner image. Whether you're using multiple pens or just one, this approach is not in line with constructional drawing. We're not to create an underdrawing and then attempt to go over it with a clean-up pass. The focus is not on creating something that appears more clean. The end result of the drawings themselves don't actually matter - all that matters is what we learn from the process of drawing itself, as each of these drawings are exercises.

This is an issue I touch upon back in lesson 2, in these notes, but the jist is that we are not to try and replace the lines from an earlier phase of construction with new ones unless it serves a purpose. Taking a smooth edge of a leaf and then making it wavy does not mean replacing the whole length with a continuous wave - it means adding individual bumps along its length, retaining the structure and flow of that original mark and adding to it.

Similarly, if we look at the plant along the bottom right of this page, we can see how you had the underlying construction in place, and then went back over all of those lines without, in many cases, adding anything. In a handful of places you added a bit of waviness or a little cut along its edge, but in several you just redrew them for the sake of a darker silhouette. The previous phase of construction already had established the majority of the structure. No more work was required.

Now, there is something to be said about adding line weight to a few key places, but that is entirely different from how you approached your drawing. Line weight does not replace lines, it is applied to key sections of existing strokes to help clarify how they overlap one another. It is applied only to a limited area, using a tapering start and end as shown here, instead of tracing over the full length of a mark. Tracing itself is an issue because it causes us to focus too much on how a line exists on the page, in two dimensions, rather than remembering that it is meant to represent an edge moving through 3D space.

Aside from this core problem, the fluidity of your leaves and the solidity of your constructions is looking great - but this problem is a significant one, so I'm going to assign a few additional pages for you to demonstrate your ability to apply what I've explained here before I mark this lesson as complete. You'll find them assigned below.

Remember that you're only meant to be using one thickness of pen in these drawings - so in case you've been working with a few, please stick to the requirements of the lesson, using only a 0.5mm fineliner.