Hello, checking in on next steps?

It looks like you may have accidentally replied to your blank comment, and then when posting your follow-up "Hello, checking in on next steps?" it was in reply to your own comment once again. We weren't notified of your replies on our end until your latest reminder yesterday. Sorry for the massive delay in our response, but the system only notifies us of replies to our own messages.

As to your ADHD, we understand that many students have a wide variety of learning struggles that make processing this information more difficult. Unfortunately we are very limited in the resources we have to bring to bear in helping a large number of students. We do this by providing feedback at a much cheaper minimum price point than what the student themselves pays - for example, the cheapest at which one can ostensibly get feedback on Lesson 1, the box challenge, and Lesson 2 (revisions included) is $10 USD, whereas we pay our teaching assistants around $20 USD for that same work, in order to fairly compensate them for their time. The focus is on ensuring that as many people are financially able to access reliable feedback, and it is largely subsidized by those (like you) who allow credits to expire.

We would love to be able to give each student individual, focused attention, and work through all of the specific confusions they may have on a one-to-one basis, but it's simply not within our capabilities with the resources we have. As such, we shift a lot onto the student in order to streamline the critique process, focusing on giving the students feedback based on specifically what their work demonstrates. We share what we see, and what could be the cause for that, but ultimately it is left up to the student to reflect upon that information within their own understanding of their circumstances.

There are certainly circumstances where due to a variety of factors - the biggest one generally being language barrier - a given student may demand more time from us to the point that it goes beyond what we can provide. As such, in those situations we've had to explain the situation, and ultimately end that student-instructor relationship. Not because there was anything wrong with the student, but simply because we could not provide them with what they needed in order to progress. There are of course many other courses and instructors out there that bring more to bear, but they're generally a fair bit more expensive than we are.

Bringing it back to our feedback, all we can really do is assess what notable issues we see, and identify what appears to be the cause. We cannot account for a student's difficulties in processing the material itself, beyond simply laying the instructions themselves out with diagrams and videos to be as clear as possible. This is something we're continually improving upon - and of course anything that may still be "out of date" in the lesson material, we merely call out in our critiques, we don't hold students back or assign revisions based on them (at least, not on their own). This does of course mean that it's important the student be able to take and apply the feedback from our critiques. If that information is forgotten or missed repeatedly, then that tends to bring us to the limits of what we can provide.

In regards to the zigzagging, I believe the TA was referring to issues like these - nothing super frequent or major, which is why in their wording they played it down. Their intention was only to draw your attention to the fact that it's something you should continue to keep an eye on. Additionally, you still have a lot of gaps (where your edge detail stroke starts a little ways off from the simple silhouette of the leaf), and overshoots (where the edge detail crosses it too far instead of merging seamlessly into the silhouette's edge). Again - things to keep an eye on, but nothing worth revisions (which is why you weren't assigned revisions on them).

In regards to narrower stems, I'd recommend that you still attempt to apply the branches technique in its entirety. I understand that the video demos don't always adhere to that, given that they are much older, and our priorities have developed over many years. We're still pushing to overhaul the video demo to better reflect the priorities we push for now, but again - limited resources, progress is slow. It's definitely a lot more difficult to apply the branches technique to those extremely narrow branches, but it all comes back down to these drawings being exercises. It's okay to make mistakes, and to struggle with applying the methodologies. All we're doing here is assessing whether you understand what you're aiming for, so you can continue practicing it yourself as you continue on, and so the exercises themselves can continue to do their jobs in rewiring how we think about what we're drawing, how we think about executing our marks, and so on.

Finally, as to the branches that were assigned as revisions, your work here is looking generally better. One thing I would recommend to ensure you continue getting the most out of this exercise is that when you draw the next edge segment, use the tail end of the previous one as a runway, overlapping it directly rather than drawing where that segment should have been.

So for example, it's common to have our edges pass that second ellipse and not quite turn enough to aim properly towards the third. Instead of starting your next segment at that second ellipse and aiming it to the third (so it would diverge from the previous edge immediately), follow along that previous edge's trajectory initially, overlapping it directly. This will make the exercise more difficult, because now we have to account for our mistakes - but in doing that, we get more out of the exercise.

To conclude - I again apologize for the circumstances that led to your response being missed for several weeks. Be sure to always reply to the TA's own comment (although I think in this case you thought you had - so if you don't get a reply, be sure to double check, and don't be afraid to draw attention to the situation by emailing me at support@drawabox.com).

That said, please refrain from getting into long explanations - I understand that you're trying to give us a better understanding of how you process the information and why certain issues may be occurring, but there's not a lot we can do with that information, and it does stress our already limited bandwidth a great deal (as mentioned in the Lesson 0 video the TA linked you to). I also understand that you may have taken prior feedback personally in some ways, feeling that they might have reflected poorly upon you (in the sense that it may have felt that you're not following the instructions, and therefore you're somehow wrong or bad). I assure you this is not the case, nor is it the intent.

Even for those who are entirely neurotypical, it's common enough for students to miss information, as the lesson material is very dense. We do what we can to draw attention to the areas students miss most often, but there's only so much we can do before everything is once again vying for attention. So, students ultimately need to resort to reviewing the material often and frequently, taking notes, or whatever else may work for them. Of course I'm sure you are already doing this, but again - ADHD makes everything harder.

To that point, while we aren't equipped to help with that, it may be helpful to talk to one of our TAs/mods on the discord server, sluggy. I mentioned in Lesson 0 that she also has ADHD, and has experienced the struggles of working through it both medicated and unmedicated. She may have some insights to share, and while I'm sure that no two peoples' struggles with ADHD are the same, it may help to see how another has gotten through the course, and has gone on to pursue a fruitful career as a freelance illustrator.

Anyway, I'm going to ask the TA to swing by and mark this lesson as complete. Just be sure to take what I've said here to heart, and read it as many times as you need.