Hello wolfpup208, I'm ThatOneMushroomGuy and I'll be the TA handling your critique today.

Arrows

Starting with your arrows your lines are generally looking fairly confident and smooth, which helps communicate a nice sense of fluidity in your arrows as they move through the world.

You're making good usage of the depth of the page by experimenting with the rates of foreshortening in your arrows, but your arrows do sometimes look a bit unnatural as it seems to me you become a bit unsure of how their edges should overlap. So don't be afraid of letting your edges overlap and to ensure that you're constructing a solid structure, try to construct your arrow in segments with the ghosting method, in this manner you can gauge whether your lines would look right and overlap the way they should before committing to a mark.

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, but there are a couple of times where you've placed it incorrectly, making it seem like your arrow is getting bigger the further away it is, and getting smaller as it gets closer, which goes against the rules of perspective.

• Perspective works in the following manner: things that are further away from the viewer will look smaller, and as they get closer to the viewer they'll look bigger. The way this affects an object of consistent size and width that stretches across space is that certain segments of this object will look bigger and others smaller, either gradually or dramatically depending on the perspective of the scene, as such the bigger part of the arrow will always be the one that's closest to the viewer so the segment that's behind it should be the one receiving the hatching.

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.

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. Some of these structures are looser than they could be, because you did not put down a boundary, you didn't establish the form that all of the later structures will 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 edge detail is looking quite well made, generally not attempting to capture more than one piece of edge detail at a time, but I did notice that in this structure you have zigzagged some of your marks which is a mistake that must be avoided as it [goes against the third principle of mark making from Lesson 1.

It's good to see that you're often approaching it additively - that is, constructing it on top of your preexisting structure, as well as putting it down with the same general line thickness as the rest of your construction, all of these are good things that help you construct solid and tight structures that still feel fluid and energetic.

Branches

Moving on to your branches they are coming along really decently made as you're following the instructions for the exercise, you're drawing your edges in segments which allows you to maintain higher control over your marks which allows you to create some solid but still organic looking structures, but there are a couple of changes that can be made in order to improve your work.

Currently you have a lot of visible tails present in these branch structures, while this is a very common mistake we can attempt to mitigate it by limiting the amount of ellipses in our branches, by spacing them further apart we'll allow for a bigger length of runway between ellipses, and ensure a smoother, more seamless transition between marks.

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. While it is good to see that you seem aware of the ellipse degree shift it can still be improved. At points your degrees hardly change which flattens your structures, so remember to look over the page explaining the degree shift again, and always keep in mind 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 decently. You're starting to follow the construction methods and techniques introduced in the lesson which allows you to construct more solid looking and believably tridimensional structures, you're demonstrating a good developing sense of spatial reasoning in these pages, but there are a couple of issues present in your work which are hurting how much you're getting out of these exercises.

First things first, an issue that hurts your work without you even realizing is the fact that you're pre-planning the amount of constructions you want to fit on a given page before you've even committed to any of them. Because of this your pages have big empty spaces that could have been better used not by adding more drawings to your page, but instead by limiting them, which would allow you not only more room to work through the spatial reasoning challenges that arise when tackling these exercises, but also give you enough space to fully engage your whole arm.

As it stands your constructions are too small and you have also chosen some very complex structures which has limited your ability to make use of the construction methods and techniques introduced in your work.

For example, in this construction you haven't constructed all of the leaf structures by following the correct leaf construction method because there are spaces on between the leaf's flow line and it's outer edges, on top of that you have also skipped construction steps and constructed the branch structures as single lines, which do not communicate any sense of tridimensionality or form, and it's a mistake.

This issue is also present in this page, and in this flower where you didn't construct the stem with the branch construction method.

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. They're not guidelines or suggestions - they are rules.

• Because we're drawing on a flat piece of paper, we have a lot of freedom to make whatever marks we choose - it just so happens that the majority of those marks will contradict the illusion you're trying to create and remind the viewer that they're just looking at a series of lines on a flat piece of paper. In order to avoid this and stick only to the marks that reinforce the illusion we're creating, we can force ourselves to adhere to certain rules as we build up our constructions.

• For example - once you've put a form down on the page, do not attempt to alter its silhouette. Its silhouette is just a shape on the page which represents the form we're drawing, but its connection to that form is entirely based on its current shape. If you change that shape, you won't alter the form it represents - you'll just break the connection, leaving yourself with a flat shape. We can see this most easily in this example of what happens when we cut back into the silhouette of a form.

While this is something that you do generally respect (and you generally don't ever cut into your silhouettes), we can see some spots in this cactus where you did extend off of preexisting forms silhouettes in here.

While this technique can be used when working on structures that are flat such as leaves, when working on structures that have volume we must ensure that each new form that we build on top also has their own volume so as to ensure the entire structure comes across as tridimensional.

• This can also happen accidentally when dealing with looser ellipses. This can be handled pretty easily though by simply treating your ellipse's outermost perimeter as the edge of the form's silhouette, as this keeps any stray marks contained within the form itself.

When drawing cylindrical structures such as plant pots, make sure to do so around a minor axis, this will help you keep your several ellipses aligned to one another much more easily. Going further, you must also attempt to construct the outer rim present in most types of plant pots and vases, and add an extra inner ellipse in order to communicate the thickness of the border of the pot and the plane shift to the inside of the vase.

Final Thoughts

You are moving in the right direction and starting to understand the concepts and techniques introduced in this lesson, but because you have drawn way too small and focused on very complex structures you lost out on a lot of practice.

It's important that you understand how to apply these techniques to your work in order to solve these tridimensional puzzles, as such I'm going to be assigning you some revisions so you can have the opportunity to revisit these exercises before moving on to more complex tridimensional challenges.

Please revisit the relevant lesson material and then reply with:

1 page, half of leaves, half of branches.

2 plant construction pages, 1 plant per page.