Hello Mangirdas, 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 great deal of confidence which helps solidify the feeling of fluidity that they have as they move through all three dimensions of the world. You're keeping foreshorting in mind while constructing your arrows which allows you to make really good use of perspective and the depth of your page, this gives a nice extra layer of tridimensionality to them.

Your usage of hatching helps you establish how your arrows twist and turn in space and further your own understanding of the tridimensional space these objects occupy, it's good that you're making use of added line weight on top of the overlaps in order to reinforce their depth.

In general you're doing well, so keep tackling this exercise during your warm ups in order to take your understanding of arrows and 3D space further, experiment with the different ways arrows can twist and bend and move across space, try different rates of foreshortening and experiment with the negative space between overlaps, all of these will help you challenge yourself and develop your skills further.

Leaves

The linework for your leaves is looking 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.

Your addition of edge detail is generally looking good, as you don't usually attempt to capture more than one piece of edge detail at a time, and you generally construct your edge detail additively. You're also keeping the line thickness between your phases of construction roughly consistent, all of which is very good and helps you create a tighter, more solid construction that still feels fluid and energetic.

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.

This structure is looser than it could be, because you did not establish a boundary, the form that all of the later structures should abide to, despite complex structures being made up of several different parts, they still exist as a single entity, by not skipping construction steps you can ensure that your constructions are much more solid and specific.

Your application of texture is moving in the right direction, as you're following the instructions for texture, but it can definitely be improved, as you make use of dots and small marks that seem random to communicate your texture at times, and you don't make use of focal points of detail to direct your viewer's eyes, which leaves no points of focus or rest in your work.

So take a look at this informal demo on how to approach leaf texture, and make sure to give these reminders on how texture works in Drawabox a read.

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 not extending your segments completely up to the halfway point between ellipses, you're only extending it to the next ellipse point, which entirely removes the healthy overlaps we want to achieve in this exercise.

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.

You're not always drawing through your ellipses twice which is a mistake that causes your ellipses to become too loose. Don't forget to always draw through them twice in this course. When it comes to your application of the ellipse degree shift to your branches it can be improved, as it stands some of your degrees are too consistent and hardly change which is a mistake that flattens your structures. 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, which are coming along nicely. You're usually making use of the construction methods and techniques introduced in this Lesson which helps you create the illusion of tridimensionality in your work, you're not only trying to capture what these structures look like, but you also focus on how they work, how they exist fully in tridimensional space by drawing through your forms and thinking about the way each piece of your construction exists in relation to one another.

This is all very good and it's helping you develop a strong sense of spatial reasoning, there are only a couple of small things that if kept in mind will help you keep improving your skills.

First things first, 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, while this is something that you generally respect we can see in this page how you've skipped steps by not constructing these small leaf structures with a flow line, by trying to capture the complexity of these leaf structures right away, instead of constructing them individually with the leaf construction method and only afterwards connecting them together, you also skipped construction steps in these flowers by trying to capture their complex shape right away, instead of constructing each petal with the leaf construction method and ensuring their fluidity in this manner.

Despite the odd conical shape of this flower, it's petals are still very leaf-like in nature and should be approached with the leaf construction method. There are two ways we can generally approach it - either by drawing different sections of this structure with the leaf construction method and afterwards connecting the different leaves together in order to build the complex shape, or by using a slightly tapered cylinder in order to construct the main body of the leaf shape, then afterwards make use of the leaf construction method, build it on top of the cylinder in order to capture the flow of the different sections of the leaf structure, and lastly connect them together.

I actually put together a quick demonstration of how this would look like to a different student once, in the context of a daffodil construction.

When approaching cylindrical structures such as plant pots make sure to start with a minor axis in order to keep your several ellipses aligned to each other more easily. Going further, make sure that you're also constructing the outer rim that's present in most types of plant pots and add a line for a ground plane as shown here this line will communicate to the viewer where an edge starts, in this case where soil starts, otherwise your structures will look like they're floating inside your plant pot.

Outside of two exceptions you're not really making use of edge detail in your pages, edge detail would have greatly helped you further communicate the form of your structures and how they move through space, but by not adding it they're left very simple, so make sure to add edge detail whenever possible, and remember that only the last step of leaf construction - texture - is optional.

Speaking of edge detail, your venus fly trap construction is looking pretty well made in general, but the way you're approaching the teeth of the venus flytrap flattens it out a bit because you're drawing it as flat single lines, which doesn't communicate a sense of form or volume, and if you look closely at a reference of a venus fly trap it's teeth do have a certain thickness to them, so it's best to approach it in the same way you'd approach edge detail - drawing it out fully as a form that attaches to the preexisting structure.

Onto your usage of texture in these pages it can be improved upon, as it stands your marks look random and unplanned, they're also very timid and small, and you're making use of hatching at points in an attempt to communicate texture which is a mistake as it does not follow the principles of texture in this course.

So let's revisit how texture in Drawabox is approached, by looking back on this page we can refresh our memory and see that texture through the lens of Drawabox is communicated through the use of cast shadows.

It is not used to make our work aesthetic or pretty, instead every textural form we draw is based on what's physically present in our reference. Our focus should be on understanding how each individual form sits in 3D space and how that form then creates a shadow that is cast onto that same surface. Only after analyzing all of this information present in our reference will we be able to translate it to our construction. This means that the shape of our shadow is important as it's the shape that defines the relationships between the form casting it and the surface it's being cast on, which is why we need to consider carefully how to design a shadow shape that feels dynamic.

This approach is of course much harder than basing our understanding of texture on other methods that may seem more intuitive or basing it on the idea that texture = making our work look good, but in the long run this method of applying texture is the one that enforces the ideals of spatial reasoning taught in this course. By following these ideals, you'll find yourself asking how to convey texture in the most efficient way possible, with less lines and ink, focusing on the implicit mark-making techniques introduced in Lesson 2. Make sure to go over these reminders in order to solidify your understanding of texture further.

Final Thoughts

In general you're applying the concepts taught in this lesson to great effect. Your constructions are looking solid and tridimensional. I'm going to be marking this lesson as complete as I believe you're ready to tackle the challenges present in the next lesson, just don't forget to keep the points I've mentioned here in mind and apply it to your work. Good luck in Lesson 4.