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1:44 AM, Monday June 20th 2022
Hey there! Congrats on completing lesson 3!
Branches: I think you grasp the main idea of this concept. Your ellipses mostly fit inside the branches, and while drawing the lines, you did well on overlapping without too many tails. For your ellipses, please remember to draw through them twice or thrice. They seemed to have been done in one go, and some lack confidence because of it. Also, on the topic of ellipses, limit how many you use in your branches. I don't think this is mentioned in the demo, but sometimes using a lot of ellipses (or contour lines in future lessons) can hurt a form. It can take you out of the illusion that it is a part of something. This is very important for the construction of plants, because it can draw more attention to the stem or branch when you want to have the attention mostly on the flower or body of the plant. As for the forks, you did a decent job of connecting them, but it would look more solid if you followed Uncomfortable's demo and drew a sphere/ball on the area that you wanted to fork, as shown here.
Arrows: Your flow lines are confident, and overall, you did a solid job. The hatch lines seemed to be placed a little too loosely and could be placed more carefully. However, I really like how you placed the hatches in a way that conveys the curving of the arrows. Also, make sure to add line weights on overlapping parts. There are some instances where I have a difficult time distinguishing which part of the arrow is in front. Adding line weights will help that.
Leaves: Excellent work on the forms and textures. They all look confident and solid. It would be nice to experiment with more folding leaves. It seems that you did this with #4, but if you could practice folding leaves in future warm ups, that would help solidify the exercise more.
Plants: Excellent work! The forms looks solid and confident. And you added line weight appropriately to convey overlapping forms well. Similar to what I mentioned above, try to limit the amount of contour ellipses you use in your branch forms. I noticed it in some of the forms on pages 6, 7, and 8. However, on the other pages, you managed to use a few contour ellipses to convey the forms well. You don't need to repeat the exercises, but keep this in mind for future exercises, especially as you get into organic forms. The less contours you need to solidify the form for you, the less likely it will take attention away from the viewer.
Overall, great work! The biggest thing I would suggest to work on is branches. Limit the number of contour ellipses, and make sure you are drawing through the ellipses as instructed by Uncomfortable. Otherwise, feel free to move on to Lesson 4.
Next Steps:
Do branches and arrows for warm ups.
Continue to Lesson 4.
Staedtler Pigment Liners
These are what I use when doing these exercises. They usually run somewhere in the middle of the price/quality range, and are often sold in sets of different line weights - remember that for the Drawabox lessons, we only really use the 0.5s, so try and find sets that sell only one size.
Alternatively, if at all possible, going to an art supply store and buying the pens in person is often better because they'll generally sell them individually and allow you to test them out before you buy (to weed out any duds).