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

Arrows

Starting with your arrows you're drawing your marks with a good deal of confidence which helps solidify the feeling of fluidity that arrows posses as they move through all the three dimensions of the world they exist in. However your arrows have little to no foreshortening, make sure to explore the size difference between arrow segments more in order to make better use of the depth of the page and push your understanding of tridimensional space further.

Your usage of hatching helps you establish how your arrows twist and turn in space and further your own understanding of the tridimensional space these objects occupy. Still speaking of hatching, there are a couple of times where you've placed it incorrectly](https://imgur.com/a/bBdxxNE), making it seem like your arrow is getting bigger the further away it is, and getting smaller as it gets closer, which goes against the rules of perspective.

• Perspective works in the following manner: things that are further away from the viewer will look smaller, and as they get closer to the viewer they'll look bigger. The way this affects an object of consistent size and width that stretches across space is that certain segments of this object will look bigger and others smaller, either gradually or dramatically depending on the perspective of the scene, as such the bigger part of the arrow will always be the one that's closest to the viewer so the segment that's behind it should be the one receiving the hatching.

In general you're doing well, so keep tackling this exercise during your warm ups in order to take your understanding of arrows and 3D space further, experiment with the different ways arrows can twist and bend and move across space, try different rates of foreshortening and experiment with the negative space between overlaps, all of these will help you challenge yourself and develop your skills further.

Leaves

The linework for your leaves is looking smooth which helps communicate their fluidity and sense of energy, it's good that you're not only trying to capture how these structures sit statically within space, but also how they move across it from moment to moment.

It's good to see that you've experimented with complex leaf structures but remember not to skip construction steps when approaching these more intricate structures.

This structure is looser than it could be, due to the flow lines for the individual "arms" of the complex structure going past the boundary laid out by the previous phase of construction (the one where you established the simple overall footprint for the structure). The bigger shape establishes a decision being made - this is how far out the general structure will extend - and so the flow lines for the later leaf structures should abide by that.

Your addition of edge detail is generally looking good, as you don't usually attempt to capture more than one piece of edge detail at a time, and you generally construct your edge detail additively. But don't forget to keep the line thickness between your phases of construction roughly consistent, so as not to encourage yourself to redraw more than you strictly need to.

There are several lines throughout your leaf structures which I assume are your attempts at leaf texture. And it can definitely be pushed further, as you've got several small and timid marks, and several big spaces of white which would communicate that the surface of your structure is smooth.

There's much more going on than just a few stray marks implying veins and we can do much more to accurately communicate this type of texture, take a look at this informal demo on how to approach leaf texture, and make sure to give these reminders on how texture works in Drawabox a read.

Branches

Moving on to your branches they are coming along really decently made as you're generally following the instructions for the exercise, but they can still be improved. While it's good to see that you're drawing your edges in segments you're extending them too far, which causes you to lose some control over your marks, your lines also have visible signs of hesitation and wobbling.

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

For ellipses it's good to see that you're making an attempt to always draw through them twice, as that allows for a smoother mark overall. When it comes to your application of the ellipse degree shift to your branches it can be improved, as it stands your degrees are too consistent and hardly change which is a mistake that flattens your structures. Remember that as a form shifts in relation to the viewer, so will the degree of the ellipses within that structure also shift.

Plant Construction Section

And lastly let's take a look at your plant constructions, which are generally coming along well made, as you're following the construction methods and techniques introduced in the lesson which allows you to construct really solid looking and believably tridimensional structures. I can see a good developing sense of spatial reasoning in these pages.

However there are some issues present in these pages which are holding you back from your full potential. So here are the points you should keep in mind whenever you tackle these exercises again so that you can continue to develop your skills.

Your approach to the constructions in a much looser, much sketchier way. Drawabox's method for construction is about developing specific skills that you can then go on to apply to your work. However, by drawing earlier phases of construction with fainter lines and later ones with thicker strokes, you approach construction as though you're redrawing everything at every step.

When drawing something with construction what we're doing is adding building blocks at each different step, using our first forms as a foundation in order to simplify our structures. In this way there's no need to alter that foundation, it should be able to stand for itself when you're done, without being redrawn, traced over, or having it's silhouette modified with 2d shapes on to of it.

Always keep in mind that the construction methods and techniques introduced in this course must always be applied to your work, as they're tools which will help you construct much tighter and solid looking structures, there are times where you deviate from the construction methods by not starting your branches with a minor axis or keeping your leaf structures simple. Remember that they're not guidelines or suggestions - they are rules.

Technically another example of you skipping construction steps can be seen in this tree construction, where you haven't drawn through your structures, fully constructing each branch and leaf construction — however this is not really a mistake, due to the nature of this course and how it teaches certain skills it's fundamental that we're always making use of the construction techniques and methods we learn to our constructions.

But certain structures are just way too complicated and it's not feasible to draw them with the methods introduced, it is simply impossible to fully draw each individual leaf structure or branch structure in a plant such as this one while still following the instructions for this exercise, as such avoid picking trees and similar structures as a subject to study in this lesson.

And lastly, let's take a look at your textures, where your textures are too explicit because you use big areas of black and random hatching to capture texture.

So remember that in Drawabox, texture isn’t about making your work look pretty or aesthetic. Instead, it’s about accurately representing what’s physically present in your reference. The goal is to understand how each form exists in 3D space and how it casts shadows on surfaces. By analyzing the reference closely, you'll be able to translate it into your construction.

The shape of the shadow is important because it shows the relationship between the form and the surface it’s on. We need to think carefully about how to design a shadow shape that feels dynamic and communicates 3D space effectively. It’s harder than just focusing on making your work look nice, but this method will help you strengthen your spatial reasoning skills. This also means that by considering the tridimensionality of the form we must consider the transitions from light to dark that your texture would have as the form shifts away in space and if affected differently by the light.

As shown in this diagram, depending on how far the form is from the light source, the angle of the light rays will hit the object at shallower angles the farther away they are, resulting in the shadow itself being projected farther. This gives us the logical grounds to say that despite two forms being identical, they don't have to cast identical shadows - and therefore we can control where we want shadows to be longer or shorter, without changing the nature of the texture being conveyed.

By following this approach, you’ll focus on conveying texture more efficiently, using fewer lines and less ink, while sticking to the mark-making techniques from Lesson 2. Take some time to review the reminders to solidify your understanding of texture.

Final Thoughts

You're starting to move in the right direction but you're falling into a couple of traps and pitfalls which are holding you back from your full potential, and stopping you from getting the most out of these exercises.

I'm not going to be passing you onto the next lesson yet, these concepts will be highly important in the following lessons, make sure to revisit any relevant material mentioned here, once you're finished please reply with:

1 page, half of leaves, half of branches.

2 plant construction pages.