Hello EthanONotFullName, 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, but they can still be improved as your arrows have little to no foreshortening, so 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 is nicely added and helps you establish how your arrows twist and turn in space. It's good that you're making use of added line weight on top of the overlaps in order to reinforce their depth.

Generally you're doing well in this exercise, so try to step out of your comfort zone more often the next time you tackle this exercise in order to keep pushing yourself further. Try arrows with different kinds of twists and turns and different rates of foreshortening, keep in mind that arrows are very flexible objects and can move freely across the world in all sorts of manners, so you should push yourself and explore the different possibilities.

Leaves

The linework for your leaves is looking pretty 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.

However there are also some unnatural bends present in your leaf structures. It's pretty normal to struggle with this as leaves can be pretty complex, so keep in mind that even though leaves are very flexible structures, that mostly applies to their length and not their width. They're like a piece of paper, not a piece of rubber, they can fold and bend in a lot of ways, but they can't stretch or compress, and if we try to force them to they'll simply rip apart.

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.

You're not usually making use of edge detail in your pages, but when you do you need to spend more time with the execution of each mark - because there are so many and they seem individually unimportant, you're putting less time into each one and so they do not properly rise off and return to the existing stroke - there are often gaps, overshoots, and zigzagging marks which is a mistake that could be avoided by putting more time into the work. No mark you draw is unimportant - if you decided it was worth adding, it's worth giving as much time as it needs to be done to the best of your current ability.

Branches

Moving on to your branches you're not sticking to the instructions for this exercise as closely as you should. While it's good to see that you're drawing your edges in segments you're going over your marks several times which goes against the first principle of mark-making from Lesson 1. Going over your marks several times will make you try to draw them more quickly, putting in less time and care into each individual mark, this is very common so it"s important to try to be mindful of it by making use of the ghosting method.

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, but do try to omly draw through your ellipses 2 to 3 times at most - more than that and your ellipses will start to become a bit too loose.

Don't forget about the ellipse degree shift and how it should be added to your structures. As it stands the degrees in your branches are too consistent and don't really change which flattens these forms. 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, unfortunately you've fallen a bit short on following and adhering to the instructions. Drawabox is a really difficult course with a lot of information that must be taken in and followed at once, on top of that it requires a lot of practice to internalize the concepts that are being taught in this course, so it's very common to miss some of the instructions, especially if you might be coming back to the course after a long time or haven't practiced during warm ups in a while, it's very important to always revisit Lesson material before every drawing session so that the information is fresh on your mind, as well as focusing on your work to the best of your ability, if you find yourself losing focus during a session it's best to put it aside and pick it up another time, so that you do the homework to the best of your ability.

Here are some of the points you should look out for the next time you attempt these exercises in order to make sure you're getting the most out of each practice session:

Not applying the principles of mark-making from lesson 1. Revisit this section of the Lesson in order to get more info, but remember that:

• Marks must be continuous and unbroken.

• Marks should flow smoothly.

• Marks must maintain a consistent trajectory.

Always pay close attention to your marks, make use of the ghosting method as many times as possible and only execute your marks when you're confident. This way your lines will be much more confident and smooth.

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 such as in:

In these structures you have not followed the instructions for drawing leaves as they're laid out in the exercise page, there are a couple of common mistakes present in your leaves.

In this structure you have not started your leaves with a flow line, the flow line is extremely important as it's the backbone of the leaf, it establishes the way the leaf flows through space, if a flow line is stiff the leaf will be stiff, if there is no flow line your leaf will come across as flat.

In this structure you skip construction lines and attempt to capture the complex edge detail right away, which flattens and stiffens your structure.

You can also see in here outlined in red an example where you skip construction steps when approaching a branch structure, by not drawing branches in the way they're laid out in the exercise you risk accidentally flattening them.

Make sure that you're always drawing through your forms and constructing them fully, I've noticed that in many of your constructions you don't draw through some of your forms, such as leaves or branch like structures, this limits your ability to work through these tridimensional puzzles and limits how much you're getting out of the exercise. Not drawing through your forms means relying on your observation skills, instead of engaging your sense of spatial reasoning and truly trying to understand how the object you're drawing works, where it comes from, what it attaches to.

In general it seems you were more focused on capturing the likeness of the plants rather than following the process laid out in the exercise page, keep in mind that even though we may choose specific subjects to draw in these Lessons ( plants, insects, vehicles ) they are not teaching you how to draw those subjects. We are using these things as objects of study, tridimensional puzzles that we can break down in order to further understand how different types of structure exist in 3d space and further our skills.

Ease up on your lineweight, it's thick, with several passes going over the same marks and jump from one form's silhouette to another, which smooths everything out too much. Almost as if you pulled a sock over a vase, it softens the distinctions between the forms and flattens the structures out somewhat.

Instead lineweight must be subtle, used only to clarify the overlaps between the forms that are being built up, as explained here.

Final Thoughts

Every drawing we do in this course is an exercise, our goal is not to draw something that looks pleasant or good, but to learn.

It's very important for students to always follow the instructions to the best of their ability, while they won't always execute it correctly or even perfectly, what's important is that the theory behind it is correct so that eventually they'll develop their skills. If we deviate from the instructions we run the risk of not getting the most out of this course, so make sure to always revisit the lesson material and always do your best to follow it closely.

Unfortunately since you didn't follow the exercises as instructed, I will have to ask for a full redo of this lesson, which will cost you an additional 2 credits and will need to be submitted as a new submission.