Hi I'll be handling the critique for your lesson 3 homework.

-Starting with your arrows, they are looking good, but some segments of your lines are looking wobbly, make sure you are ghosting as much as needed, because this wobbliness undermines the solidity and flow of your arrows. You have kept the foreshortening and the negative space between the zigzaging sections of the ribbon in mind so good job there.

• As a minor observation, I don't see that you are using lineweight on the overlapping parts, it is an important thing to remember.

-Moving on to the leaves exercise, I think you have done well, you integrate the little bumpos and cuts seamlessly into the structure, but I don't see you tried to make any complex leaf structure like the maple leaves, this is not amjor mistake, but I'd suggest you try it in the future.

-Continuing on to the branches exercise I have some observations.

• Make sure each segment extends fully halfway to the next ellipse. Most of yours do, but there are some that fall a bit short.

• Try to use that last 'tail' of the previous segment as a runway, overlapping it directly before shooting off towards the next target. As demonstrated here, this along with the previous point's extension to that midpoint helps to achieve a smoother, more seamless transition from segment to segment.

• Make sure that you're cognizant of how the degree of each ellipse reflects its orientation in space relative to the viewer. This is something we discussed back in the Lesson 1 ellipses video, so you can check that out if you're unsure what I mean.

-Now regarding your question about your fineliner, that's the point of using them in this course, they make bold marks even with the slightest pressure, this forces you to be more careful and mindful about the marks you want to make.

-I think that you are struggling to draw from your shoulder because of the spacing in your drawings, it appears that you are thinking ahead to how many drawings you'd like to fit on a given page. It certainly is admirable, as you clearly want to get more practice in, but in artificially limiting how much space you give a given drawing, you're limiting your brain's capacity for spatial reasoning, while also making it harder to engage your whole arm while drawing. The best approach to use here is to ensure that the first drawing on a given page is given as much room as it requires. Only when that drawing is done should we assess whether there is enough room for another. If there is, we should certainly add it, and reassess once again. If there isn't, it's perfectly okay to have just one drawing on a given page as long as it is making full use of the space available to it.

Now I want to address a number of problems that show up in your drawings.

-First of all make sure that when drawing pots you draw a minor axis wich will help you to align the ellipses.

-Draw each form in its entirety. There will be circumstances where, say, a flower has so many petals that they overlap one another. Instead of allowing the petals to cut each other off, draw each and every one in its entirety. These are all just exercises in spatial reasoning, and drawing each form in its entirety will help you better understand how those forms relate to one another in 3D space.

-Draw one thing at a time, and focus on every single mark. Use the ghosting method to ensure that you're considering what each mark's purpose is, and how you're going to achieve it best. If you have a plant with many leaves, each individual leaf's flow line is no less important for being part of a larger group. There are no deadlines or expectations on how long this stuff should take - you don't have to complete a single drawing, or a single page, in one sitting, or even one day. You can take as long, as many days as you need to complete just one drawing. What matters is that you execute the work to the best of your current ability.