Hi Robdraws,

Good job for completing the lesson! Let's get into the critique.

Arrows:

You've got very good line weight control for your silhouette. Your hatching lines are positioned correctly as well. However, while your foreshortening is not too bad, you need to push it a lot more to make it truly pop. For instance, for the arrow at the bottom right (the largest one), the width between the edges at the very front seem to be of the same size as that directly behind it. Push this more so that you can make the foreshortening really stand out. Same goes with the gaps between your arrow edges.

Leaves:

The fact that you've drawn a lot of leaves per page shows that you have taken your time with this lesson instead of rushing it. While patience is a very important factor, however, remember that the quality of your work is always better than its quantity. Your line work feels quite off in terms of its weight. For some of your leaves, you haven't added any line weight to their silhouette, and that tends to flatten the drawing. Also when you do add line weight to the silhouette, make sure that edges further away from the viewer are not thicker than edges closer. I can see this in some of your leaves. Generally if you can, have edges that are closer be thicker than edges that are further away, because otherwise it can end up creating unnecessary visual noise.

Your shadow hatching lines in some places seem off in terms of perspective. Make sure that they run directly across the width of your leaf edges, so that it is perpendicular to the leaf's major axis. In some places, it's running at a diagonal angle. Also, they need to address to the form of the leaves you're drawing. For instance, if your leaf is curved, don't make your hatching lines perfectly straight. If you do, you'll end up contradicting the forms your drawing - something you should avoid at all times, especially because of the fact that this course is primarily focused on construction.

Regarding flow, it's not too bad. I can see you've exaggerated some of the curvature in your leaves, which is a good starting point for giving them a sense of life. However, keep your flow consistent. For instance, if the gesture of a leaf is an 's' curve, make it obvious. Don't elongate your forms excessively when it's unnecessary to. Like, don't end up using long 's' shapes for your major flow lines, where the flow is mostly straight for the majority of the leaf, and then it has sudden curvature on the end sides. In my opinion, it doesn't look natural.

Branches:

Pretty good. Though, your branches tend to come off as flat to me mainly because there doesn't seem to be enough line weight to the silhouette of your forms. Work a bit more on your flow, too. If your flow is meant to be curved for instance, make sure that there are no subtle straight lines to it anywhere. Often that can ruin the gesture of your drawings, so be careful. Remember to always be drawing from the shoulder. Also when forking branches, follow the specific method that Uncomfortable gave you. In your case, there's no ball around any of the connection points. What your currently doing is not giving your drawings a sense of believability.

Plant Constructions:

Also pretty good. The constructions themselves seem to have been done correctly most of the time. Though, I have a few pointers here and there. For your cactus drawing, you might want to make your contour ellipses or curves a bit more visible. With the pot that your cactus is sitting in, try to show more of the actual thickness of it along the entire major axis of its form, and not just at the top. Same thing goes with all your other pots. Al'so with your orange drawing, you need to actually draw some contour ellipses or curves in there.

With your forms in general when drawing ellipses, be more mindful of how their degrees change in space relative to the viewer. With your carrot drawing for example, you could have pushed how their degrees change a bit. To me, it looks a little bit flat. It's not a huge issue, but it's still important to consider anyway. Also, keep each ellipse aligned to the minor axis it's on.

You could have added in some line weight here and there for some of your plant silhouettes. For your snake plant, you could have added some line weight to make the forms look more solid. You also could have done the same thing with your cactus, even just for the edges that are closest to the viewer. In addition, the stem of the daffodil could use some line weight.

When looking at your daffodil leaves, I noticed that you weren't being consistent with your light source when it comes to your cast shadows. You can see cast shadows on both sides of the bottom leaf, whereas in reality, it should only be on one side. First decide where your light source is, then go from there. Cast shadows should also address to the form they're on. In your daffodil plant again, looking at the cast shadow on the stem, I can see that you obviously made the edge straight, whereas the stem itself is curved and cylindrical. Your cast shadow should therefore have had a curved edge. This idea is analogous to the organic intersections exercise, where sometimes you really have to push the shape of the cast shadow in order to reinforce the illusion of the form it's sitting on.

Lastly, I should say, don't have too many drawings on one page. It's better to draw even one plant only on a single page and put more focus into it. Having one plant per page will give you more spacing for you to work on, and if you happen to have spare room for another plant drawing after you've drawn the main one, then that's fine.

Everything else you've done quite a decent job on. It seems you've attempted to follow all instructions carefully, while remembering to apply some of the techniques learned in previous exercises. So well done!