Lesson 3: Applying Construction to Plants
1:43 AM, Monday June 1st 2020
Please review my homework for Lesson 3.
Thanks in advance,
Your work here is really well done! I just have a couple minor things to point out, but all in all you're doing a great job. Since I'm basically swamped with critiques today, I'm going to do my best to try and get this critique out quickly, and try not to dwell on any empty platitudes.
Starting with your arrows, you're doing a great job of conveying a strong sense of flow and fluidity, and applying perspective consistently to both the arrow's positive space and their negative space, as discussed back in lesson 2. You're applying the same kind of flow and movement to your leaves, capturing how those leaves not only sit within 3D space, but also how they move through the space they occupy, given that these leaves are continually moving from moment to moment.
You're also doing a great job of applying constructional principles to them by building on top of every phase of construction directly. There are no signs of you treating previous phases of construction as something to be ignored, or followed only loosely - you adhere to them closely and in a structured fashion each time, and that's great.
Your branches are spot on - you're applying the technique to create largely seamless transitions from segment to segment, giving the impression of a fairly continuous complex stroke from end to end. There are some visible tails here and there, but for the most part you're doing very well, and these will continue to reduce with practice.
Moving onto your plant constructions, you continue to largely do a good job, though there are a couple things I'd like to point out. To start though, what I mentioned in regards to your adherence to the constructional principles (laying structures down, then building directly on those structures instead of leaving yourself flexibility and leeway) is present throughout these constructions as well, and as a result they feel solid and believable as three dimensional objects rather than just flat shapes on a page.
One thing that did stand out to me however was this drawing. I think this is largely because it's an earlier drawing, but it is very important to draw each individual form in its entirety. So with the leafy bits coming off this one, drawing each one as a whole entity, as shown here, then breaking it down and finally adding line weight/cast shadows to separate things out, is far more in line with the kind of exercise that we're doing here. Yeah, it results in a lot of extra linework and some areas that can be difficult to parse visually (prior to the addition of line weight), but it teaches us more about how the different entities exist in 3D space, and how they relate to one another.
In this plant, just a minor point - it seems like you're drawing through your ellipses 1.5 times or so. Remember to draw through them a full 2 times before lifting your pen. It is worth mentioning that here I do feel like the leaf construction maybe wasn't given as much time as you had in previous drawings, and ultimately ended up being left to be a lot more simplistic (missing a lot of the more complex edge details) as well. So for future reference, remember that you can push these things a lot farther while continuing to adhere to constructional principles - it just means more phases of drawing. So in a sense you can consider this drawing to be developing well, but not really finished just yet.
A quick point about this daisy and this hibiscus - when dealing with the subtler leaf textures, you're still dealing a fair bit with line rather than shadow shapes. One thing to keep you focusing on the use of shape instead of line in cases like this is to make a point of actually drawing each shadow shape as a circuit. That is, don't draw a stroke with a start and end point that is different - actually outline a shape, then fill that in, as shown here. This will force you to avoid taking the easier route (just making a quick swipe with your pen), and instead will force you to think about everything in terms of actual shadow shapes.
Aside from that, you're doing very well. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so keep up the good work.
Next Steps:
Feel free to move onto lesson 4.
This is a remarkable little pen. I'm especially fond of this one for sketching and playing around with, and it's what I used for the notorious "Mr. Monkey Business" video from Lesson 0. It's incredibly difficult to draw with (especially at first) due to how much your stroke varies based on how much pressure you apply, and how you use it - but at the same time despite this frustration, it's also incredibly fun.
Moreover, due to the challenge of its use, it teaches you a lot about the nuances of one's stroke. These are the kinds of skills that one can carry over to standard felt tip pens, as well as to digital media. Really great for doodling and just enjoying yourself.
I would not recommend this for Drawabox - we use brush pens for filling in shadow shapes, and you do not need a pen this fancy for that. If you do purchase it, save it for drawing outside of the course.
This website uses cookies. You can read more about what we do with them, read our privacy policy.