Lesson 3: Applying Construction to Plants
9:53 AM, Tuesday August 29th 2023
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12:58 AM, Thursday August 31st 2023
Hello noCherry, I'm ThatOneMushroomGuy and I'll be the TA handling your critique today.
Arrows
Starting with your arrows, your linework is looking smooth and confident, which helps sell the fluidity that your arrows have as they move through the world. You're generally making use of the depth of the page well, and all of your arrows look fairly tridimensional, however you can still push the foreshortening in your arrows to more fully explore the depth of the page and challenge yourself.
It's good to see that you're making use of hatching, as that helps you clarify how your arrows twist and turn in space as well as how reinforce your spatial reasoning knowledge. As a finishing touch to your arrows don't forget to make use of added lineweight on top of the overlaps to reinforce their depth.
Leaves
Onto your leaves the fluidity of your arrows is translating nicely into these new structures. You're not only capturing how these leaves sit statically in space, but also how they move across the space they exist in from moment to moment.
Your addition of edge detail is looking quite good, you're generally not trying to capture more than one piece or bump of detail at a time with one exception, so don't forget to never zigzag your edge detail as it's a mistake that goes against the third principle of mark making from Lesson 1. You're also putting it down with the same line thickness as your initial construction, and usually putting it down additively, on top of the forms you've already drawn - all of this is good and helps you create a tighter construction that still maintains a nice sense of fluidity.
It seems that you're trying to add some texture to your leaf structures, but your marks are too timid and don't follow the principles of texture in Drawabox - they're very explicit. Take a look at this demo that demonstrates how we can create more dynamic shadow shapes, as well as this informal demo on how to think when approaching leaf texture, notice how there's a lot more going on than just a couple lines implying veins in the surface of the leaf - there's a lot you can explore to more convincingly communicate this type of tridimensional information.
Branches
Moving on to your branches it seems you haven't completely followed the instructions for this exercise, more specifically in how your edges are to be laid out, while it's good that you're drawing your edges in segments, you're only drawing your edges to the next ellipse, and not extending it up to the halfway point between ellipses - when you do, you extend it very little. This effectively removes the overlaps between marks that we wish to achieve in this exercise.
So make sure to revisit the instructions for the exercise, remember that you must start a segment at the first ellipse point, extending it past the second ellipse and fully to the halfway point between the third and second ellipses, with a new segment repeating this pattern from the 2nd ellipse and so on until your branch is complete. This helps us maintain higher control over our lines and allows for a healthier, more seamless transition between marks.
For your ellipses you're not drawing through them at least twice, which is a mistake, you must be drawing through all of the ellipses you make in this course. You seem aware of the ellipse degree shift which helps you solidify the tridimensionality of your branches.
Plant Construction Section
And finally let's take a look at your plant constructions, which are generally looking well done, you do have some problems here and there which hurt the solidity of some of your forms, but overall you're demonstrating a good, developing sense of spatial reasoning. However, you haven't really tackled many constructions of your own, which is a problem.
Demos are like training wheels, they help you learn and understand how these construction methods can be used together in a variety of ways in order to construct certain tridimensional structures, but just like with learning how to ride a bike, you won't know how much you know until you take the training wheels out - and then fall on your face. But it's okay, because the next time you try it it'll be easier because you already have an idea of what you should do.
However if you never take the training wheels out, you won't develop yourself to your full potential.
There are also some other issues present in your work, here are some of them so that you can address them in your next attempts at these exercises.
In this construction there are places where you've skipped some construction steps, or used them arbitrarily, for example in these branch structures not only have you not made use of a knot in order to attach your branch structures to the main body of the plant, but you haven't constructed them fully because you didn't draw them around a minor axis, or construct them with ellipses, this causes them to feel less solid and volumous.
You have also skipped construction steps when constructing your leaf structures, this one is the most noticeable, because you haven't made use of flow lines in order to fully construct your later leaf structures, but your other structures are also not as tight and specific than they could be because there are gaps in between your "structures", they are not individually constructed and then connected, instead you jump into trying to capture the complex form of the structure right away, which stiffens and flattens the form.
Remember that these techniques and construction methods are not guidelines or suggestions, instead they're tools which were created with the explicit purpose of helping you tackle different spatial reasoning challenges and create drawings which feel tridimensional. By not sticking to them as closely as you should you risk creating structures that don't feel as solid and specific.
You tackled the same construction twice, the pitcher plant demo, while this is not necessarily a mistake, it can fall into the grinding mentality - where you attempt to perfect a construction, when there's no need for such a thing, you haven't learned as much from tackling this same structure in the same way you have before than you would if you tackled a different structure with different spatial reasoning challenges for you to solve. Remember that it's not about getting things perfect, or even right, it's about learning, and in order to learn you must challenge yourself.
Don't forget that edge detail must be added additively on top of your structure, avoid cutting back into your flat forms as much as possible, as that can cause us to focus too much on the shapes on the page, instead of the edges they represent in 3d space. When it comes to volumous forms, never cut back into them at all, instead, always construct new forms on top of them in order to ensure your entire construction has a nice sense of volume to it.
- When approaching cylindrical structures such as plant pots make sure to start with a minor axis in order to keep your several ellises aligned to each other more easily.
Final Thoughts
In general it seems you're following the construction methods and techniques introduced in the lesson, however because you have only tackled demos, with the execption of a single construction there's no way to properly gauge if you have absorbed the concepts this lesson seeks to teach.
As such I'm going to be asking you for some light revisions, please keep in mind that they must be original constructions. Once you're done revisiting the lesson material, please reply with:
1 page, half of leaves, half of branches.
2 plant construction pages.
Next Steps:
1 page, half of leaves, half of branches.
2 plant construction pages.
3:25 PM, Wednesday September 6th 2023
Here's the link with to the things you told me to re-do. I hope there's some progress to be seen regarding the mistakes I made before.
Looking forward to your review.
12:43 PM, Thursday September 7th 2023
Hello NoCherry, thank you for getting back to me with your work, try not to think of these pagesbas "redos", they don't replace the work you already made, they're extra pages, an opportunity for you to revisit the concepts introduced in the lesson before moving on to more complex construction challenges.
For your leaves there's not much difference between your original submission and your most recent attempts, they look fairly well made, but it's becoming a bit more clear that you're staying in your comfort zone too much, that is, while some of your leaves fold in 3d space, most of them do not, which points that you may be afraid of experimenting with more variety in the way your leaves move through space, so make sure to get ouf of your comfort zone more often in the future.
Your branches are looking much better as you follow the instructions for the exercise more closely, in order to minimize the amount of gaps and visible tails in your branches, try to superimpose your new lines on top of the preexisting ones.
Moving onto your plants they are generally looking well constructed, as you're making use of the construction techniques introduced most of the time, with the exception of your lily of the valley construction, where you did not properly construct the flower structures - by drawing them as circles, and then drawing small leaf like structures at the edges you do not properly communicate how your structures fully exist in space, and this flattens your construction.
In the case that a construction doesn't allow you to apply the techniques and methods introduced in a lesson properly, it may be the case that you're drawing way too small, as is the case in this specific construction. My recommendation is that you focus on smaller sections of your plant in these situations, covering more space on your page with smaller sections of your plant structure will allow you to construct them more thoroughly and focus on fully capturing each form with the construction methods introduced in the lesson.
You have several lines on top of your constructions, from what I can see it seems they're your attempt at capturing the texture present in your structures, but this is a very explicit way of approaching texture that doesn't follow the principles of texture that Drawabox uses as a learning tool.
Texture in the context of this course is an extension of the concepts of construction - in essence, they're the same concept, just at different scales, with construction focusing on the primitive forms that make up different objects and texture focuses on communicating the small forms that run along the surface of said subject. While construction tells the viewer what it'd feel like to manipulate that object with their hands, texture visually communicates what it would feel like to run their hands across the surface of that object.
Neither construction nor texture have anything to do with aesthetics or making a drawing visually interesting, what we draw here is based on what's physically present in our reference. As mentioned here when making use of texture, we should focus on how each individual form present on the surface of an object casts a shadow onto that same surface, and how that shadow would then be distorted by the surface it's being cast on. This means that the shape of this shadow is incredibly important as it defines the relationships between the form casting it and the surface it's being cast on, as such you should design your shadow shape in a way that feels dynamic, as shown here.
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 that enforces the ideals of spatial reasoning taught in this course. By following them, you'll find yourself asking how to convey texture in the most efficient way possible, with less lines and ink, focusing more on the implicit mark-making techniques introduced in Lesson 2.
Overall you're doing really well, and as such I'm going to be marking this submission as complete, good luck in Lesson 4.
Next Steps:
Don't forget to add these exercises to your list of warm ups.
Move on to Lesson 4.
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