Uncomfortable

2016-03-07 23:39

Great work, generally. Your forms and constructions are quite solid, and are going in the right direction. The only issue I see is on page 8 (the Rhododendron one) where you're definitely getting hit hard by the seemingly overwhelming nature of the tree.

Before discussing tackling the texture, it's important to note that you've approached that whole tree in a very rough, sketchy manner. That certainly has its place, and I don't want to say that it's wrong (it isn't) but it isn't quite the approach the lessons are about. Here your lines are all loose and floating, rather than coming together to produce solid forms. That is unavoidable for the foliage in the treetop, but the trunks certainly should be more solid.

The trick to building up foliage like that is largely to grow more accustomed to working in three tones - solid black, solid white, and a textured transition between them. Here you're relying on fairly scribbly hatching to block in dark areas - you should be filling that space in completely. From the looks of it you might not be using a fineliner/felt tip pen as required by the lesson - if you aren't, be sure to pick one up. The approach of splitting up between pure black and white white is covered in the notes on this page: http://drawabox.com/lesson/texture.

You're certainly not going to be drawing texture all over the whole treetop - instead you'd be applying it where you want to have smooth transitions between light and dark - so this is still focused on how your form turns towards and away from the light. The undersides of your treetops would be completely black, creating a solid shape. The edges of this shape would have 'bites' taken out of them, reflecting the shapes of the leaves themselves. It's the edge of the silhouettte that really implies the detail within the shape, so you want to make sure you use it to your full advantage.

Here's a loose example of a tree that drew when I was going through this lesson myself, a couple years ago: http://i.imgur.com/VevR5ax.jpg. It's not an ideal example, but it does demonstrate the use of solid black and 'designed' shadow shapes used to imply existing detail.

When applying detail, you can afford to be a little more loose, but absolutely do not apply hatching lines the way you have here - you're totally flattening out your forms by applying straight lines on them - they function like contour lines, and tell the viewer that they're looking at a 2D shape. In general, hatching lines represent a specific kind of texture - you'll want to be looking carefully at your reference image to identify the textures and patterns that exist within them, rather than just applying this sort of catch-all approach.

Anyway, as I said, you're generally doing great. Feel free to move onto the next lesson.

Uncomfortable

2016-03-10 00:01

Unfortunately for you, I have few beatings to offer. Your work is extremely well done, and your general sense of form and texture is highly developed.

There are mainly two areas that I'd like to talk about, both are issues where you're not following the constructional drawing method as closely as you could.

The first is your leaves, specifically the ones that are very wavy like on this page. The construction method is all about moving from simple to complex. With a leaf, the first thing you want to focus on is how that flat form flows through 3D space. You don't want to get into the complexity of how wavy it gets. Once you've established the simple structure of the form, then you can start adding more complex detail on top of it. Like this: http://i.imgur.com/5EUp7ro.png.

Now, your leaves are already looking pretty good despite not followng those steps, but it's definitely something to keep in mind.

While in general you're applying construction pretty well (like the palm tree's leaves and such), there is one other point where you're falling a little short: this page. It's a minor issue, but if you look at where a branch forks off into several branches - those joints start to feel a little flat. It's always a good idea to actually show exactly how one of those branch-tubes connects to another. A contour ellipse or a contour curve right at that joint helps to maintain the sense of 3D form.

Lastly, I like your use of texture, but these notes may help you push how you tackle subtle things like leaves to the next level. Look closely at the vein patterns - you'll notice that the lines that are present there are actually not lines at all. They're shadows that can take various shapes and aren't limited to single strokes. Knowing this can help you add more subtle and more convincing detail.

Anyway, feel free to move onto the next lesson. You're doing great, and your sense of form and space is excellent. Keep it up!

Uncomfortable

2016-03-20 18:49

I believe this is the first instance where your digital work came out better! Looks like your line quality and control is improving.

There's two main issues I want to raise:

• Your construction of complex leaves - through your work there's a few examples of 'wavy' leaves with edges that are more complex than a simple curve. As per the constructional drawing method, you must always start off simple, and add complexity in successive passes rather than attempting to jump into that complexity right off the bat. So, you would first capture that leaf with simple, singular curves defining the edges of the form, then you would add the waviness afterwards in a subsequent pass. This example tackles frayed/jagged edges rather than waves but the concept is the same.

• You have a tendency to overly rely on hatching lines when conveying texture. This kind of pattern implies a fairly small subset of possible surface textures, so you're really pigeon-holing yourself. You need to try and play with a larger variety of patterns and textures, and this begins with taking a much closer look at your reference images and looking for repeating visual elements that are present. I talk about this, as well as how to organize these textures, in these notes. I'd say in general your texturing is much cleaner and less haphazard in your digital work - you're still strictly overusing hatching lines, but your application of them is much cleaner. In your traditional set, you have a tendency to be quite messy and disorganized when applying those details.

I'd like you to do three more pages of plant drawings, in ink. Focus on plants that will allow you to demonstrate your understanding of how to apply the constructional method to leaves with somewhat more complex details and edges.

Uncomfortable

2016-04-01 19:14

If you're interested in receiving a homework critique for this lesson, you'll have to have the prerequisites (lessons 1 and 2) marked as complete first. Each lesson is geared towards identifying certain core problems that tend to become more and more hidden as the subject matter becomes more complex.

Uncomfortable

2016-04-02 02:30

You've got some good work, and some less good work. This page came out great - there's clear attention being paid to the geometric construction of the forms, and you've added enough contour curves to establish how those forms exist in 3D space. Your textures are also coming along nicely.

On other pages, the solidity of your cylinders can be a little lacking, so you've got to be on top of that. Draw through your ellipses, make sure your contour curves wrap properly around the rounded form, don't overuse contour lines or space them out too regularly (that tends to make things look man-made), and make sure that you cap-off any cylindrical forms even if you cut them off in your drawing. Basically having an elliptical cap will reinforce the idea that the form is a cylinder. If you leave it open ended, it'll read as flat.

The other concern I have, has to do with how you approach complex leaves. You tend to jump into complicated shapes and forms way too early, rather than building up from simpler forms. In the lesson I linked to the article on constructional drawing. When it comes to anything, you've gotta start off simple, and then in successive passes build up that complexity. This will result in a lot of extra lines from previous passes in your drawing, but that's part of the process.

So be sure to read that article. Aside from that, you've done well, so feel free to move onto the next lesson where you can continue to practice constructional drawing.

Uncomfortable

2016-04-02 17:59

Fundamentally this work is pretty decent, but there are a couple concerns that I have.

• First and foremost, your drawings are really small. I'm basing this off the relationship to the thickness of your lines, as well as your handwriting, but I'm definitely getting the impression that they can't be more than a few inches across. You absolutely must draw larger. Drawing bigger will give you considerably more room to think through your spatial problems, while also giving you more room to tackle textural problems - which you are clearly struggling with.

• The first page was really the only example of any sort of complex, wavy leaf forms that I saw. The rest of your homework demonstrated a greater understanding of approaching things in a simple-->complex manner, but I want to reiterate the importance of the constructional method, especially when tackling the flat leaf shapes. You want to be establishing them at their simplest levels, then gradually incorporating more and more complexity in subsequent passes. If your leaf has wavy edges, your first pass will summarize those complex edges with a simple curve. Then you can use that as a scaffolding for adding the more interesting information. This will result in more linework being present, but that's simply part of the method. The trade off is that you gain a fuller understanding of how that form moves around in 3D space.

Anyway, consider this lesson complete but be sure to apply what I've mentioned above when you attempt the next lesson.

Uncomfortable

2016-04-10 02:29

You're not quite ready to move onto the next lesson just yet. Your plant drawings are alright, but you're missing one fundamental aspect of the lesson - based on how you're approaching these drawings, you tend to stick very much to thinking about these plants in terms of being 2D elements moved from a 2D photograph to a 2D drawing. There's very little understanding of how they exist as 3D forms. Furthermore, you're also not applying any of the constructional drawing principles (the link to this article was included at the beginning of the lesson) - instead of starting off simple and building up complexity in successive passes, you tend to just jump into complexity far too early.

This demo summarizes much of what you're missing. First and foremost, plants are made up of both geometric forms (there's a lot of cylinders), and flat forms (like leaves). The geometric forms should be constructed carefully and deliberately - think through every mark you put down, apply the ghosting method and so on. Your flat forms should be drawn like this. Start by defining the center line, which establishes the general flow of the leaf through 3D space. Then establish the edges with simple curves, regardless of how much more complex the actual leaf's edges are. Then build your more complex edge detail on top of the scaffolding you've already laid down.

You may want to also look into the 250 cylinder challenge, as your cylinder construction seems to be rather weak at the moment. The notes included on that page will refresh your memory as to how one goes about constructing a proper cylinder (specifically the use of the minor axis to align your ellipses correctly).

Once you've had a chance to read through the article on constructional drawing, I'd like you to do another four pages of plants, keeping what I've mentioned in mind. Remember to apply the concepts mentioned in previous lessons, as each lesson builds upon the last.

Edit: I just remembered one last thing that I didn't mention - when applying texture, you have a tendency to fall back on using a lot of hatching where hatching lines aren't necessarily the best option to reflect the texture you're trying to capture. Hatching lines really only correspond to a fairly limited range of textures - you should be more careful about spending much more time observing your reference images, trying to identify the visual patterns present there, and thinking about what exactly makes a surface appear to be rough, wet, smooth, bumpy, etc, and how different kinds of marks can impact that illusion.

Uncomfortable

2016-04-13 19:03

It looks like your account isn't listed as having completed the prerequisites for this lesson (lessons 1 and 2) - is it possible that you completed them on a different account?

Uncomfortable

2016-04-23 22:57

There's a lot of good stuff here, but when it comes to leaves, you're missing some of the key concepts in regards to constructional drawing. More specifically, when you deal with wavy, complex edges in your leaves, you generally tend to jump right into that complex detail, rather than starting off with simpler shapes and forms as described in the constructional drawing article. It was linked at the beginning of the lesson, and some parts of your homework do demonstrate that you likely read over it, but I'd like you to take another look and pay special attention to the demos on the page dealing with leaves.

Secondly, you're drawing confidently, which is good, but you're also drawing quite loosely at times, which is not. A loose, sketchy approach will undermine the solidity of the forms you're building up - be sure to close your shapes and forms, rather than leaving them open and half-drawn.

Lastly, you're relying FAR too heavily on hatching lines for your textures. Sometimes your lines are well organized and structured, other times they're rather sloppy. In general though, you need to be pushing yourself beyond thinking about every texture in terms of short hatching lines. Look closer at your reference images, look for other kinds of visual patterns that you can leverage. Also, don't scribble. There were a couple drawings where things got rather chaotic and uncontrolled.

I'd like to see three more pages of plant drawings. Like I said before, there's a lot of great stuff here, but you've got to tighten up your approach. Think more in terms of constructing your object from closed forms in 3D space, focus on building up complexity instead of jumping right into it, and push yourself to go beyond your comfort zone in terms of texture.

Uncomfortable

2016-04-28 23:13

There's a few considerable issues here, but amidst all of that, I see a few interesting signs of certain concepts clicking in your mind.

The first key problem is that you're very eager to put marks down on the page, and because of this, you put far more ink down than is necessary. You're not thinking before drawing each mark, not planning out the strokes - instead you're sketching roughly, somewhat erratically, and then adding more ink to attempt to cover up any resulting mistakes. Less is always more. A few well placed marks will always look much stronger than a dozen trying to accomplish the same thing. The unfortunate thing is that figuring out how to place those few marks is difficult, so we often fall back to this messier approach, which doesn't allow us to improve. Facing difficulty head on, and failing multiple times is necessary to make progress.

Secondly, something that caught my attention in your work was the size of the sketchbook you're using. I could be wrong, but it looks to me to be quite small - perhaps 5"x8"? If I'm right, this is definitely causing you some trouble, as it is forcing your drawings to then be even smaller (you're cramming several into each page). When working small, you leave yourself with very little room for your subconscious to work through spatial problems. Furthermore, the thickness of your pen tip comes out looking considerably fatter relative to the overall drawing, so even the thinnest strokes you can manage tend to look clunky. It doesn't help that at this stage, your pressure control is fairly limited. Overall there's a lot about your approach that is already making this difficult task several times more challenging for you.

I recommend that you work on loose printer paper (8.5x11). It'll give you more freedom to work through the spatial challenges in your mind, won't cause you to fuss with pages trying to fold back over (if you do go for a sketchbook in the future, ring-bound is often better because you can fold back pages completely), and there's the added benefit of people simply being less precious with their drawings when they're on loose sheets. Sketchbooks are daunting.

I did see a little something developing, however, when I looked at that mushroom drawing. You're very clearly not afraid to allow your lines to fuse into larger swathes of black space, which is good to see. That said, your rendering is still being approached with a lot of focus on hatching lines, both to create surface texture and to fill in shadow shapes. Always remind yourself that hatching represents one kind of texture, one that is not often seen in nature. Don't be so eager to fall back to it, as it is almost always a sign that you have not looked closely enough at your reference image to identify the subtler patterns and rhythms that exist there. Also, if you want to fill a shadow shape, it's better to properly fill it, not leave it half-filled with hatching lines.

That said, I don't think you should be worrying about texture right now. Construction and form comes first, with texture a far, far, far second. I'd like you to try this homework again, considering what I've mentioned above. Don't apply any texture until your very last two pages, instead focus entirely on creating solid constructions. Here's a few specific tips to keep in mind:

• Apply the ghosting method to every single mark. Never draw without thought

• Draw from your shoulder, and think about whether or not a long, smooth stroke will do the job much better than whatever series of short segments your arm is itching to put down.

• Do the lesson 1 and 2 exercises (pick a couple each day) as a warmup before starting this stuff. It's very clear to me that you've let that stuff fall by the wayside.

• When you draw a form as part of your construction, make sure you close that form. Don't leave them open without any sort of cap or end, this immediately flattens the form out.

• Place contour lines strategically - two or three, carefully placed, will be far more effective than a dozen placed haphazardly. Also, remember that spacing them out evenly will look more man-made, while having them at irregular intervals will look more natural.

• Less is always, always more. Your instincts tell you to draw draw draw draw. You must rein them in, and remind yourself to draw only what is necessary to convey your idea, or to help yourself understand what it is you're drawing, in terms of how those forms sit in 3D space.

Uncomfortable

2016-05-02 17:44

There's a lot of nice stuff going on here, but there's one key issue I'd like to point out. When drawing your leaves, you always jump into somewhat more complex edge detail, specifically the little waves and curling that we see there. By doing so, you're tackling a lot of separate challenges simultaneously - achieving the correct overall flow of the leaf through space, maintaining cohesion across the multiple bends and folds along the edges, etc. Instead of doing it all at the same time, it's better to start off simple, and then progressively build up complexity in successive passes.

• First, define the flow of the leaf by drawing its center line.

• Then establish the space it encompasses by defining its edges with simple curves.

• Once your basic leaf is constructed, then you can start adding the more complex edge detail upon this existing scaffolding.

This is the core premise of constructional drawing and is demonstrated specifically in this demo. It does lead to a lot more linework in your drawing, but all of that linework is valuable in helping you understand how the form exists in 3D space.

Aside from that, your general sense of form and construction does seem to be well established. Also, looking through the bulk of your work, I can see areas where you've applied this same concept (like building up palm-like branches and the like). Just know that it should be applied across the board. Always start off as simple as possible, and then hinge more complex detail on simple scaffoldings.

Anyway, feel free to move onto the next lesson.

Oh, I wanted to mention that if you're the one who pledged via patreon under the name 'something_gnu', check your patreon inbox. I sent you a message there with a little bit of housekeeping.

Uncomfortable

2016-05-05 18:59

Your sense of form is generally okay (although that pepper at the end is very, very flat), though I'm concerned about your general application of line. You have a tendency to be very sketchy with your linework, rather than patiently thinking through every mark before putting it down on the page. Each line you draw should be captured with a single mark, and you should never reflexively reinforce a line you've just drawn with another. It's very important to apply the ghosting methodology to your general linework.

Also, since you did this lesson so long ago, it's likely that you have not reread it since - be sure to read over this article which was linked at the beginning of the lesson. Also, go over the demos as well, especially the one that shows a couple drawings of a leaf. Look at how I focus on conquering different aspects of the leaf one at a time. First defining how that leaf flows through space with the center line, then enclosing the space of the leaf by adding two simple curves, one on each side. Then I use this scaffolding I've put down to add any sort of additional complex edge detail, like wavy edges, thorns, tears, etc.

I'd like to see another two pages of plant drawings.

Edit: I forgot to mention this - you have a tendency of using hatching lines way too much when applying texture. Hatching lines really only represent a fairly limited subset of possible textures, but people are used to using them in general as a sort of shorthand for "i have no idea what goes here". Whenever you get the urge to apply hatching lines, stop yourself and take a really close look at your reference image. Try to identify the different visual patterns and elements that exist there, and ask yourself whether or not hatching lines are necessarily the best choice. Most often they're not.

Uncomfortable

2016-05-07 18:30

Unfortunately I'm going to have to ask you to redo the parts you did in pencil, using ink, as it is a firm requirement of lessons 3-7 that you do them using a fineliner/felt tip pen. The point of the lessons is not to have you show me what you can already do comfortably, but rather to push you beyond your boundaries. For these lessons, this specific medium is a requirement because it forces you to learn certain skills, concepts and values. It makes you come to terms with your mistakes, with the quality and flow of your linework, and so on.

Though since your work is technically not complete, and as a result I am holding off on critiquing it, here are a few tips you should consider applying when redoing it:

• Your linework is quite scratchy when working in ink. You must not break up a single flowing line into multiple segments, as you have in some areas. A single line should be drawn with a single mark, done whilst applying the ghosting method detailed in lesson 1.

• Don't draw slowly and carefully - invest all of your time in the preparation phase of the ghosting method, then when you actually execute the mark on the page, do so with a quick, persistent and confident motion, relying on your muscle memory to drive your hand and not your brain. Do not allow your brain to make course-corrections, resulting in a stroke made up of several individual motions. Draw with a single, continuous stroke.

• Take a look at this demo I did a few days ago for someone else: http://i.imgur.com/xPMeUv8.png. Specifically I'm showing you this for the steps used when constructing leaves, but the top part is relevant as well.

Last of all, I encourage you to reread the lesson in full. Since you missed my point about the felt-tip pen/fineliner requirement, there's likely other things you've missed as well.

Uncomfortable

2016-05-10 18:14

Generally your drawings are rather nice, though I really want to stress the importance of what I mentioned in the constructional drawing article, which was linked to at the beginning of the lesson. Though this varies throughout your homework, you do have a tendency to draw more in terms of shape, at least at the beginning of the lesson. As you progress, you demonstrate a better understanding of form but this is something that is very important, so I do want to stress it.

Specifically looking at your funghi, I'd like to point you to this demo. Make sure you capture each form completely - don't leave ends open, close them all off in order to ensure their place in 3D space is solidly defined.

I did notice that you have a tendency to use a lot of hatching - in some places it is effective and appropriate, but more often it tends to be overused. There's a couple things to remember here - hatching lines are one possible texture that can be present. One of many. More often than not, when someone uses hatching lines, it's because they have not looked closely enough to identify other patterns that are present in their textures. Furthermore, when you use hatching as you have done, you tend to really ramp up the amount of contrast and visual noise in an area - that is, from all of the alternating dark/light areas. This contrast becomes very distracting, and draws the viewer's eye to an area with nothing of actual worth. For this reason, it's important that if you're adding hatching only to fill an area with shadow, that you fill it in with solid black. Also, in general, it is usually better to add less visual noise, rather than more.

Anyway, keep these points in mind as you continue to move forward. Feel free to move onto the next lesson.

Uncomfortable

2016-05-11 19:30

You're not limited to using strictly elliptical contour curves - they're much more flexible than that, and are merely lines that run along a form to describe how its surface warps through 3D space. So, you can have a contour curve suddenly hook around the edge to imply a much thicker form, compared to the standard flat leaf: https://i.imgur.com/A6WiIQC.jpg

Uncomfortable

2016-05-14 20:37

There's quite a few issues that I noticed - which is good, because it means there's a lot of things we can adjust about your approach.

• You're drawing REALLY timidly. Sometimes this manifests as chicken-scratching, but the rest of the time you tend to be very afraid of putting marks down on the page, lest you make a mistake. It's important that you draw confidently, closing off all of your shapes and forms and making sure your lines flow smoothly, rather than quivering with worry. You *will make mistakes, accept that as an inevitability, and don't worry about whether or not you'll have a pretty drawing at the end. Just focus on what you're constructing.

• This brings me to my second point - construction. Constructional Drawing (this article was linked to at the beginning of the lesson) is all about starting with simple, easily-constructed forms (both organic and geometric) and then gradually increasing complexity in successive passes, never adding any detail that cannot be supported by what's already on the page. It's much easier to be confident in your drawing if you're focusing on drawing a simple form, rather than all of the complexities involved in a given plant. Don't worry about three steps ahead of where you are - look at your reference image, identify the simple forms that exist there, and reconstruct them on your page.

• I mentioned this already, but it's important. Close off all of your forms. Don't leave any forms open (like leaving the bottom of a step as two parallel lines with no cap between them). This flattens them out, and undermines your own belief in the illusion that you are drawing 3D forms, not 2D shapes on a flat page. Furthermore, when dealing with long forms like tubes, it's important to work towards keeping the width of the form - the distance between the two parallel lines - as even and as consistent as possible. This can be rather difficult, but always strive to avoid areas where the lines unintentionally pinch together, or swell apart. This helps maintain the illusion of solidity.

I've scrawled a bunch of notes, basically what I said here, over one of your pages: http://i.imgur.com/9TJqRY5.png. It may help put some of the points in context. There's also a step-by-step construction of a leaf, which you should follow carefully.

I'd like you to do another four pages of plant drawings, let's see if we can get some of this stuff sorted out.

Uncomfortable

2016-05-17 19:23

I think you're demonstrating some solid development as to your understanding of construction and how to consider your plants as a series of connecting 3D forms. There's plenty of room to grow, but generally you're moving in the right direction, and you will continue to develop with time. I'm going to mark this lesson as complete, but there is one bit of advice I have to offer.

Always think about how your different forms connect to one another in three dimensions. It's very easy to focus entirely on the forms themselves, and then to be rather vague about how they intersect, but that intersection tends to go a long way to really push the believability of whatever it is you're drawing. Here's a quick example of what I mean: https://i.imgur.com/EIdJZJp.jpg

Anyway, keep up the good work and feel free to move onto the next lesson.

Uncomfortable

2016-05-19 19:05

Your use of form and construction certainly improves over the set, starting off a little on the weaker end and gradually growing sturdier. Your line quality still has a tendency to wobble, for the same reason I discuss in this comic. Also, I've got a couple different demos I've done in regards to constructing leaves that you should take a look at - I've noticed that with yours, you don't really establish a particularly strong sense of how the leaf flows through space (which comes largely from starting with your center line and thinking through how it moves through 3D space):

• http://i.imgur.com/A6WiIQC.jpg

• http://i.imgur.com/xPMeUv8.png

Generally though your work is coming along well, and you're moving in the right direction. I'll mark this lesson as complete, so you may move onto the next lesson.

Uncomfortable

2016-05-20 20:24

Hooooonestly, I don't see signs that you actually read the lesson, or the constructional drawing that was linked at the beginning of the lesson.

To start with, you're not breaking down what you see into its base configuration of simple forms - you're seeing lines, and drawing lines, so as a result everything comes out quite flat. Secondly, you're drawing contour curves without really thinking about what their purpose is - they're a tool, and using the tool poorly a hundred times is still going to look worse than using it correctly once. I'll admit that my first demo is a little sloppy as far as contour curves goes, but I still put thought into the curvature of the surface they're intended to describe.

Lastly, shading is not important. You'll notice that in all of my demos, I only add shading once the forms are all fully fleshed out and the whole thing is constructed and recognizable. I don't use shadow to help emphasize the idea of 3D form, I use it to help organize the image, simplifying areas that have gotten too noisy and helping emphasize some forms over others. Shading isn't something you should be occupied with at all. Your main priority should be focusing entirely on the construction of your object.

Firstly, here's some notes on your homework: http://i.imgur.com/kLBugvc.png

Next, here are some demos/notes I did for other students that should help you understand what all this construction business is about:

• http://i.imgur.com/xPMeUv8.png

• http://i.imgur.com/A6WiIQC.jpg

• http://i.imgur.com/EIdJZJp.jpg

There's also a lot of demos on the construction article. Reread all of the material and try this lesson again.

Uncomfortable

2016-05-26 18:31

You've demonstrated some impatience here. You've submitted your lesson 3 homework before having the lesson 2 material marked as complete, and both sets of work show me that you haven't really taken the time to read through the material provided.

First off, your lesson 2 revisions are not correct. You are making the same mistakes, not wrapping the contour curves properly around the organic forms. Rather than giving the impression of hooking back around the surface as it turns away from the viewer, they hit the edge and stop abruptly. I provided you with additional notes on this issue, and you haven't really applied them.

Furthermore, in your lesson 3 work, I don't see any sign of you having read over the article on constructive drawing, which was included at the beginning of lesson 3 in red. As a result, your plant drawing as not done well.

I'm going to spend more of my time critiquing this work, as you did not wait for lesson 2 to be marked as complete, and didn't read the material I've already written carefully enough. Redo the organic forms with contour curves again (after reading my critique and the resources I offered more closely), then submit it again. Only move onto lesson 3 when the previous lesson is marked as complete, and read the lesson in its entirety before starting the work.

Uncomfortable

2016-05-29 04:57

Honestly, the notes aren't that important. They're of additional value once you've spent enough time and focus on the actual forms you're drawing, and the overall construction. That said, when it comes to your construction you're doing an okay job. You seem to be grasping many of the concepts, and are working towards applying them effectively. There's a few things I'd like to point out, but generally you're doing well.

Firstly, when drawing any forms - in this case, a lot of your cylinders - make sure you cap them off on both ends, even if your drawing cuts off halfway through. For example, the bottom of your mushroom was left with two lines open. This causes your drawing to flatten out, and more importantly, will weaken your sense of what you've drawn as being a solid 3D object. Our main priority here is to really fool you as the artist into thinking that your 2D drawing is actually a window into a world containing real 3D forms.

Secondly, when you draw leaves, it's important to start off with the center line to establish how that leaf flows through 3D space. I noticed that you did not do this with many of your leaves, and the result is that they come out a little more stiff, with less of a sense of how they're twisting and turning. Here's a helpful demo on that subject: http://i.imgur.com/A6WiIQC.jpg

The only other thing I have to suggest is for you to loosen up a bit with your linework - right now it's quite stiff. By loosen up, I don't mean to be more careless when drawing - From what I can see you're thinking through your spatial and constructional problems a fair bit, and I'm glad to see that. What I mean, however, is that when actually drawing those marks, you want to do so with confidence. Don't make slow, belaboured strokes, and be mindful of how you can taper and thicken a line by varying pressure as you draw. A lot of your lines are quite uniform right now, like you're pressing as hard as you can (or close to it) on the pen as you make every mark.

Anyway, I'll be marking this lesson as complete so feel free to move onto the next one.

Uncomfortable

2016-05-31 19:49

Very nice work. Your general sense of the constructive approach, as well as your application of texture is coming along great. Early on your use of contour curves is a little shoddy (they're not really wrapping around the forms that well), though this improves as you move through - largely because you end up using contour ellipses instead of contour curves. I do however see a trend that overall your lay-ins are a little bit on the loose side. Your drawings come together as you develop them further, but I'd say you'd probably benefit from taking more care with drawing each line, planning it out and considering it carefully before putting the mark down.

As I mentioned, your use of texture is coming along great. I think you're demonstrating both solid observational skills in identifying the textures that are present in your subject, as well as strong organizational skills. There's still lots of experimentation going on, which is certainly a good thing. The Titanopsis 01 page for instance is really, really noisy (as you mentioned yourself) but at the same time the care with which you've drawn each detail certainly counteracts that. There's no randomness, and there's clear structure to it all. That said I'd probably encourage you to allow things to come together into solid black more easily. You do this to a degree, but your threshold is fairly high leaving a lot of high-contrast areas and fewer solid black ones.

I do like how you approached your live oak. Tree tops are definitely beyond the scope of this lesson, and it's really intended to be something the student figures out on their own by extending the concepts - which is exactly what you did, though perhaps earlier than I would have expected. All that said, I would definitely encourage you to consider the form of the treetops more before jumping into the texture portion. You approached texture well, but overall the treetops end up feeling somewhat flattened out. you went from loose ellipses straight into detail, rather than considering their volumes as organic forms.

Anyway, you're doing great. Consider this lesson complete and feel free to move onto the next lesson.

Yarik_

2016-06-02 21:19

Ehhh how did I miss those messages.

Never mind - I'm seeing you're trying to have a break here. Lengthy questions are kinda rude.

I'll just keep going with the plants for this month and take all the flowers in there too. If we're indeed going to have a lesson for folds/similar things later on it won't hurt to have "learned" something similar before anyways :V

Uncomfortable

2016-06-03 01:46

I'd say that one's definitely on the more complex end of things. It follows principles similar to leaves (a flat object flowing through space) but it also behaves similarly to a 3D form because it encloses volume (despite being open on the bottom). That said, while I understand your mentioning gravity here, it's actually much less of a factor than you might think. Hair, drapery, that sort of thing is entirely governed by gravity as its folds and locks cascade off of other supporting forms. This particular plant has a lot of tension in it, and more or less holds its own form. Despite gravity it still curls back up around the edges.

The thing about these lessons is that when you move on from a lesson, you're not technically finished with that material. Each lesson from 3-7 tackles the same topic of construction, and the establishment of solid forms from many different angles. Each perspective on the matter does come with emphases on certain aspects, and the order of progression is tailored to take advantage of this, but at the end of the day you're not out to master one thing, then move onto the next.

Anyway, to answer your question, this is one of the more complex forms that I wouldn't worry too much about right now. Feel free to try them out and see whether or not you can think through this spatial and constructional problem, but if you stumble don't worry. What I do want you to focus on right now is basic form constructions (combining solid, voluminous organic and geometric forms to build up the stems and masses of your plants) and the construction of flat forms like leaves and petals, and capturing how they flow through space convincingly.

While I'm on break this month, tomorrow I'm going to post a big collection of some of the more useful demos I've done as part of peoples' critiques in the past. A lot of them will focus on capturing that flowing aspect of leaves, and a lot of others will focus heavily on the notion of construction. Keep a look out for it.

Uncomfortable

2016-06-08 18:39

Your constructions are coming along pretty nicely! I think the most successful pieces are the ones where your sense of construction spills over into how you deal with your textures - continually breaking things down into smaller and smaller levels of granularity, rather than drawing a distinction between "now i'm done my forms" and "now let's start thinking about texture."

In the drawings where you do draw more of a distinction between texture and construction (which inherently is not a bad thing, I just think it marks a shift in how you think), I think you tend to rely more on hatching lines rather than thinking about all of the different kinds of details and itty-bitty-forms that are present there to cast their little shadows and generate various patterns. Hatching lines can be nice, and they certainly can work for a variety of subject matter, but I think it's important to extend your reach beyond that and really take the time to look closely at your reference images.

The only other thing I want to mention is pretty superficial, but - your ellipses, the ones you use to mark out your focal points, are pretty awful. They tend to be quite uneven, and you seem to try and relieve this issue by adding more line weight - which kind of only makes things worse. Remember to ghost through your ellipses first, and draw them with a quick, confident pace. If you bungle something, don't make it darker and more visible, just let it be and move on.

Anyway, feel free to move onto the next lesson.

Uncomfortable

2016-06-10 23:43

Stellar work. Both your constructions and your texturing are coming along great. On your first page, I noticed that you start your leaves off a little more complex (incorporating the wavy edges rather than starting off with simple curves and adding the waviness in a subsequent pass) but I see you improving upon this in later drawings. I'm also pleased to see the wide variety of textures in your drawings, you're clearly exposing yourself to a wide variety of visual patterns, and are demonstrating a good understanding of form even at the finer, microscopic levels.

Initially, looking at one of your early cacti, I was going to point out that your use of lines in your texture were flattening the forms out - then I saw your cross-section and realized they in fact were intentionally flat! So rather than pointing it out as a mistake, I'd like to commend you for the smart use of your tools.

The only thing I want to mention is that you're not drawing through many of your ellipses. You're generally handling them okay anyway, but when you reach more circular ellipses, the little bits of unnevenness and stiffness tend to become more visible, so it's ever more important to draw confidently in a way that having the multiple passes allows. Drawing through your ellipses is more about training you to draw confidently for the future, rather than the immediate result. Anyway, I'll leave that up to you, as while I do encourage you to practice in that manner, I don't want to mess with a good thing.

Feel free to move onto the next lesson.

Uncomfortable

2016-06-13 19:43

You do show some progress - you start off quite weak in your constructions, with forms that maintain little to no solidity. Your last handful of pages do improve on this front, so I'm going to focus my critique there.

The first thing that jumped out at me is your overuse of hatching lines - you rely on them almost entirely to fill in spaces on your forms. There's two issues here - first off, there is no need to fill things in. It's perfectly fine to leave a surface blank, and it is considerably worse to fill it in with hatching when it does not match the texture of the object you're drawing. You see, hatching reflects only a very small subset of possible textures, and it's not one that comes up frequently in natural objects. This leads to my second issue - people tend to use hatching as a shorthand for texture when they do not take the time to observe their references carefully to identify the little textures and patterns present. I can see some overall macroscopic details that you've added, but after features go beyond a certain scale, you just switch to hatching.

There's another major problem with your use of hatching in particular - you're drawing straight lines that cut all the way across your forms. This has the negative effect of completely flattening out those forms, as the details that rest upon a surface will describe the curvature of that surface through space. If you draw straight lines, this communicates to the viewer that the surface itself is flat. Basically it functions just like contour curves.

Beyond how this communicates information to the viewer, it does tell me one thing - you yourself are not yet convinced that the forms you are drawing are, in fact, 3D and solid. You still perceive them as flat drawings on a flat page. This is fairly normal, especially for beginners, and it is one of the core goals of this entire set of lessons. All of the constructional drawing, the contour curves, the build up of forms, it all exists purely to convince you, to fool you and to make you buy into the lie that the page upon which you are drawing functions like a window into a whole other world. Once you have achieved this (and there's no shame in not getting there yet, or even for quite some time), you will find yourself unable to draw straight lines across a rounded surface as you have done here. It'll be more like trying to draw perfectly straight lines across a pear with a permanent marker. Your brain will fight against it to maintain the illusion.

Next, two more problems that are related. They both come to the use of contour curves. First of all, you do certainly need work wrapping those contour curves around the forms so that they appear to wrap around convincingly. I know you mentioned that you haven't been drawing with pen for a while - I'm going to assume you also mean that you haven't kept up with the exercises from lessons 1 and 2. As you continue to move through the lessons, you should still be picking two or three exercises from those first two lessons each day to do as a warmup. You certainly haven't left those exercises behind - it's important that you continue practicing them to keep building up those base, fundamental and technical skills.

The other issue in regards to contour curves is that you have a tendency to, rather than really think through and plan the application of one curve, you compensate by drawing lots of them. It's the old quality vs quantity debate - and here, quality wins out every time. A dozen quickly drawn, poorly thought out curves isn't worth half a single well executed mark. I often find that two or three are the most I'll ever need on a form. Also keep in mind that when you space them out regularly on a form, this is going to give a more man-made, manufactured appearance. Spacing them out irregularly on the other hand tends to look more natural.

Last of all, make sure you go through the article on constructional drawing (even if you have already, it often helps to reread these things), and to go through the demos posted in this gallery. I'm finding that even while you draw your constructions (which are better developed by the end of your set than the beginning), you are still very much preoccupied with your details and your texture. Do not allow yourself to be distracted. Focus entirely on the step you're on, and remember that construction is infinitely more important than detail. Draw each form in its entirety, and strive to capture their volumes and solidity. Don't be loose, plan all of your strokes in advance and apply the ghosting technique as much as possible.

Oh, one more thing - imgur lets you edit your images after the fact, applying rotations where necessary. Critiquing work that isn't upright is significantly more difficult for me, so please ensure that they are adjusted correctly next time.

Please try the work for this lesson again.

Uncomfortable

2016-06-19 01:27

Your later pages are looking much better - I especially like pages 6 and 7, you do a good job of building up construction and detail in successive passes, resulting in forms that look solid and tangible.

I'd say the only notable thing I'd like to mention right now is to draw a distinction between forms that are organic, and those that are more geometric, and specifically looking into how to approach constructing a cylinder (take a look at the notes on the 250 cylinder challenge page). I picked out one drawing where you drew your flower pot as more of an organic form, which robbed it of its solidity: http://i.imgur.com/oBaSct5.png.

Anyway, generally you're doing well - feel free to move onto the next lesson.

Uncomfortable

2016-06-25 15:13

The important thing to acknowledge about the arrows exercise is, that like leaves, you're taking a flat - pretty much 2D shape - and you're distorting it through 3D space. You need to acknowledge and begin to understand how to depict its movement through space to capture the sense of flow. It's very easy for people to think that since it's a 2D shape, they can draw it without consideration for 3D space - but the rules of perspective (smaller further away, larger up close, etc) are still very relevant here.

Uncomfortable

2016-06-29 12:57

Looks like you only linked to a single image.

Uncomfortable

2016-07-01 17:23

I get that it's been seven months since your last attempt, but I'm not at all getting the impression that you applied much of my last critique to your latest try.

This is what I said last time: https://www.reddit.com/r/ArtFundamentals/comments/3jflnu/lesson_3_drawing_plants_version_3/cwy3lgn

To summarize, here are the main points:

• Always build your constructions from simple to complex. Simple, as in, a line with as few changes in direction as possible. A simple leaf can be constructed from two basic curves. Then you build up complexity on top of this.

• Your first step when constructing leaves should always be to establish how it flows through 3D space, using a single line. Like the construction of the arrows from lesson 2, this line can curve and twist, but you need to be conscious of the fact that it's moving through 3D space, NOT across a flat, 2D page. This is an illusion that you need to buy into - you need to be fooled before you can fool anyone else.

Examples: http://i.imgur.com/TSN8ALH.png, http://i.imgur.com/XXWtwJD.jpg, http://i.imgur.com/vvVfuQW.png, http://i.imgur.com/sKpJbGq.jpg (all taken from this big album).

These are two core concepts you are still missing. Your center lines often don't even extend the whole length of the leaf (telling me that you are not constructing your leaf around it), and many of your leaves' simplest edges are wavy - which is complex - rather than simple.

Another thing I'm noticing is that when you draw your flower pots, your construction of cylinders is off - you'd benefit significantly from looking at the 250 cylinder challenge, where there are notes on how to construct a proper cylinder with consideration for its minor axis and the alignment of the two ellipses. Another thing to be aware of is that it's great to draw through your forms, though I noticed that in one of your cylinders you did so with a broken, dashed line. This in particular is a bad idea - as soon as a line is broken, it ceases to maintain its flow, so the whole purpose of the dashed line becomes kind of moot. You can't trust it. Draw the entire ellipse, and draw through it as covered in lesson 1. Don't worry about the fact that part of the line is technically not visible - we are not here to make pretty pictures, we are here to learn how things exist in 3D space. Wasting lines is bad, but as long as a line is of value in helping us understand how our objects sit in 3D space, they should be drawn.

Lastly, I see several places where you're trying to add lighting. There's a reason I don't cover this - people tend to rely on shading to convey the illusion of 3D form, but this is a crutch. My lessons focus entirely on understanding the silhouettes of forms, and describing their contours. The silhouette of a form is the first thing the viewer's eye will read, and therefore has the greatest impact when describing how that form turns through space. Shading, on the other hand, is an interior detail which is not acknowledged until much later in the observational process, so its impact is significantly lessened. Don't concern yourself with it. Just focus on the things I cover in my lessons, when doing the homework for them.

Overall, I'm getting the impression that you aren't really keeping up with the material from the last two lessons. As described here, you should not be leaving those exercises behind - you're not done, not ever. As you continue to do those exercises as warmups, you'll see your lines become smoother and straighter, you'll find that your arm moves how you wish it to, by your intent, and not wobbling all over the place. To achieve this however, you have to keep at it.

Were I you, I'd start from the beginning. You started this whole process a VERY long time ago, and I'm inclined to believe that not all of that time was spent on this stuff. We get rusty, we forget things, it's normal. Also, looking back, I just realized that I never marked your lesson 2 as complete, so I'm not sure why I critiqued your first attempt at this one.

Go back to the start, and do lesson 1. Then the 250 box challenge. Then the 250 cylinder challenge. Submit both of these (you said before you'd done the 250 box challenge, but never submitted it) upon completion, so you can get feedback on them. The lesson 2. Then come back to lesson 3, read through the resources given to you carefully, and repeatedly. And try it again.

I see no signs here that you are not capable of drawing - the problems that come up are related, but very different. The gaps between attempts, the long periods of time without practicing the exercises, missing key points I've mentioned in my critiques. It's a matter of patience and focus, nothing more.

Uncomfortable

2016-07-03 16:27

Your work's rather hit and miss, but I suppose that's kind of normal at this point. Some of your constructions were quite well done, such as:

• The five leaf plant on the bottom left: http://i.imgur.com/JuowdZQ.jpg

• The plant that takes up the majority of the top of this page: http://i.imgur.com/IKrrd7q.jpg

• The fern-like leaf (bottom right) where you started off with the simple curves defining its space, then broke it down into the smaller bits: http://i.imgur.com/87fO8nw.jpg

• The leaf on the bottom right - the construction is good, though the texturing is lazy: http://i.imgur.com/050nS7A.jpg

In general though I did find that while your textures are moving in the right direction, you tend to deal with any sort of small, complex bits with more randomness than you should. Don't ever draw little marks without considering what you're drawing - always put thought behind it and continuously look back at your reference to see what the patterns actually look like. Also, when you're combining areas of texture into solid black (which is good), what you need to be thinking about is how that black transitions into white - it does so by use of texture patterns. Some edges may be sharp, where it goes directly from black to white, others are going to transition by having texture in between.

Also, I noticed that you don't tend to draw through your ellipses - make sure you go back to doing that. Every ellipse you draw for my lessons and submit to me should follow this methodology.

Here are some additional notes.

I am going to mark this lesson as complete, but continue working on this stuff as you move forwards.

Uncomfortable

2016-07-05 20:10

The overall impression that I'm getting is that you're jumping in too far, too early. You're focused very much on complexity and on detail, and your more basic components suffer for it. For instance, your contour curves generally don't wrap convincingly around their forms, and the center lines of your leaves - which the entire leaf should be built up around and depends upon - are stiff and poorly thought out. Each contour curve should be crafted thinking about how that line runes along the curving surface of the object. Each leaf's center line should be designed by thinking about how this simple, flat object is going to be moving through space, from being closer to the viewer, to further away, rather than simply being a line moving across a flat page.

When it comes to detail, you're very much trying to imply detail rather than putting it down explicitly. It's true that this is our goal, but you're running before you can walk. You need to slow yourself down, and think through everything you do - observe your reference carefully, and don't draw for more than a few moments before looking back at it. Don't let your brain simplify the things you see, and it will do that if you look away too long and start relying on memory.

Here are some notes I've drawn over your homework. I think it would be wise to revisit the organic form exercises in lesson 2 - you should actually be doing the exercises from the first two as warmups regularly, so as to keep yourself from forgetting the material, and to keep improving upon it.

Ultimately, I'd like you to try your hand at this homework again. Try to stick to simpler forms and constructions. The cactuses are a good bet, large floating leaves are also good. Complex trees and whatever that stinkhorn thing was probably aren't a good bet at this point.

Uncomfortable

2016-07-11 22:42

I'm seeing a lot of issues, some of which I advised against in the notes or in previous lessons. For instance,

• Not drawing through a lot of your ellipses, especially as you go further into the homework

• Skipping steps in the constructional approach (on page 9 you jumped straight from a general circle to complex, wavy petals)

• Flower pots are essentially cylinders, with varying degrees of complexity - this should be applied to instances such as page 7. You attempted to draw those strictly from observation, rather than applying the constructional approach.

• You have a tendency to leave a lot of your stems uncapped when you crop them off, causing them to flatten out instead of maintaining their cylindrical/tube-like form

• Some of your texturing employs scribbling, which should be avoided at all costs (page 11)

• I could be wrong, but I see a lot of signs that you're not drawing your leaves in the right order. The ones in your initial exercises are well done, but when you draw leaves as part of plant constructions, they don't flow very nicely, and feel quite stiff, as if you're not starting with a center line, or not putting much thought into how it moves through space and constructing your leaf around it (rather than ignoring it as you build up the rest of your form).

One thing that may help is to, for now, draw from photographs rather than from life. Drawing from life is a great way to practice, but right now it may be putting far too much on your plate. Once you get the general sense of construction down, you'll be able to move back to that.

Also, as I mentioned above, your initial exercises are well done (aside from not drawing through your ellipses) - it's a matter of applying what you did there to your constructions. Please redo the 8 pages of plants. Also make sure that you're still doing exercises from lessons 1 and 2 as warmups.

Uncomfortable

2016-07-13 18:33

The problem is not so much in terms of your construction. Generally those forms are fine, though if anything had to be improved on that front, I'd recommend focusing on how you draw your initial center line, around which the rest of the leaf is constructed. The exercises I added to this lesson last week discuss the concept of a line flowing through 3D space, rather than simply cutting straight across a page. Anyway, you're doing fairly well already on that front.

Your problems all come in with your application of texture. You are not at all communicating anything to do with the actual material the leaves are made of, you are merely attempting to fill it all in. I can see quite clearly that you are not comfortable with leaving any surface in the focal circle blank, and so instead of focusing on demonstrating texture, you're trying to capture value (light vs dark).

To put it simply, don't do that. Your concern with light and shadow is distracting you considerably, and it's causing you to severely over-render your drawing. As a result, your textures overpower the forms in your drawing, and everything flattens out.

For the most part, you're only really applying one kind of 'texturing' - hatching lines - which do not actually reflect the texture of the leaves themselves. You're not taking the time and care to really look at your leaves and see what is going on there, what kind of patterns exist, and so on.

The fact of the matter is that most of these leaves are very smooth. There isn't much in the way of little raised forms on their surfaces, and it's these raised forms that would cast little shadows, which in turn create the lines and patterns one sees as texture.

There are very, very subtle veins, which you may hint at very very slightly, but they're virtually invisible. Considering how you're struggling with this, you should go look at the resources on the Texture Challenge page.

Uncomfortable

2016-07-16 21:50

Generally pretty decent. There's some issues, the biggest of which is your heavy use of hatching (or more specifically in your case, scribbling). You should never scribble haphazardly, but moreover you're using hatching as a standard fallback for texture, rather than really taking the time to actually look at the surfaces in your reference and capture the textures there. In that sense, it's not so much that you didn't do a great job at texture, but rather that you didn't do texture for the most part. The 25 Texture Challenge is definitely something you should start on - though you'll want to do it alongside your other lesson work, since it takes a lot of time to complete.

As far as your construction goes, it's coming along reasonably well. Plenty of room for improvement, but that will come with time and practice, especially as you tackle the problem from different perspectives in later lessons.

For your morel mushroom question: this demo took way longer than i expected. As for the other question, that's part for the course. You're going to make all kinds of mistakes, fail all kinds of ways. It's part of learning - just reflect upon what went wrong, and keep it in mind for the next drawing. That said, the mistake you made here is that you didn't follow the construction method for petals and leaves, starting with the center line and building around it.

Anyway, I'll be marking this lesson as complete. Go ahead and move onto the next one.

Uncomfortable

2016-07-19 19:54

Your work's alright. As far as construction goes, you're doing okay for the most part, though there's a couple hiccups here and there. For instance, the leaves on this plant, you didn't apply the construction method the initial exercises were meant to drill into your head. Also, you have a tendency to have your constructions fall apart when you draw smaller (which is a common problem), so you should consciously make an effort to avoid doing little square-inch-doodles. For example, these are too small. You leave yourself with no room to think through the spatial problems.

In this one, you've started off with a circle, but from what I can see, you don't actually go far enough to convince yourself that what you've drawn is a sphere (a 3D form rather than a flat, 2D shape).

As far as texture goes, you're not doing great. Luckily that's not our focus here, but I do want to make it very clear that you are scribbling all over the place. Scribbles aren't worth much - they have no planning and no thought behind them, they're just randomness, and don't go very far to capture any specific texture. Avoid scribbling at all costs. Doing the 25 texture challenge as you mentioned is definitely a good idea, though it's a fairly time consuming challenge so expect to do it for a while alongside other work. And as I mentioned: don't scribble.

I recently did a demo of that morel mushroom you drew, as another student was struggling with it. You can find it here: http://drawabox.com/viewimage/texture/3dtextures.jpg

Anyway, I am going to mark this lesson as complete. You've got plenty of room to grow, but each lesson tackles the challenge of construction from different perspectives, in the hopes that through one of these different angles of attack, you will find one manner of thinking about it that will click. From there, it's generally not hard to revisit the previous approaches and understand them as well. So, feel free to move onto the next lesson.

BUT STOP SCRIBBLING D:

Uncomfortable

2016-07-20 19:48

Fairly decent work, though I'd say at times the amount of attention you pay to applying the constructional method waxes and wanes across your work. Sometimes you stick to it firmly, other times you skip steps and get a little sloppier. Your observational skills are strong, so they help cover up the sloppiness, but this is much more difficult to do when it comes to other subject matter. It's very important that you push yourself to follow the process of starting as simple as you can, and then steadily building up complexity in subsequent passes.

For example, your wavy leaves on the left side of this page: https://i.imgur.com/RuHnQdP.jpg - before incorporating any wavy details, you should have defined the basic shape of the leaf with simple curves constructed around the central line of the leaf.

Also, the flower pot on this page https://i.imgur.com/pPDmZDq.jpg is a good example of where observational skills fall flat, and construction is necessary. The flower pot's a cylinder, so you must construct it as one. Might want to take a look at the 250 cylinder challenge to get a refresher on the importance of the minor axis, and other such things.

Anyway, I'll mark this lesson as complete so go ahead and move onto the next one.

Uncomfortable

2016-07-20 23:13

Not really, to be honest. Your linework is stiff, you're not implementing some of the things I mentioned in my last critique, and you're skipping on basic things covered in previous lessons. This can at least in part be attributed to the big gap since your last submission (which doesn't really matter to me, but it's inevitable that you'd be rusty since you're not keeping up with the previous exercises as warmups) but a lot of it also has to do with you not reviewing material and following instructions. There's only so much advice I can impart, you need to put it into action.

• You're not drawing through your ellipses, so your contour ellipses are stiff and misshapen, and don't do much to reinforce your organic forms (1, 2, 3...)

• You're not applying the leaf construction that goes from simple to complex with successive passes of breaking down forms and adding detail - you jump right into complex wavy edges with no scaffolding to support them (4, 6, 8)

• You're not capping off your forms. When you leave them open-ended, they stop maintaining their 3d form and flatten out immediately (2, 3, 4, 5 ...)

Some things are alright - the leaves on page 8 are decently constructed, though in general your use of texture isn't good. It's distracting you from your construction in general, so I strongly suggest that you set texture aside for now. When you do use texture, stop using hatching and cross hatching - those are merely attempts at filling up surfaces, they don't signify any sort of actual thought or observation.

If you look back at the lesson, you'll notice that a couple weeks ago I posted two additional exercises, one focusing on constructing leaves and one focusing on constructing tubes (stems and such). See that you do them, and be sure to read through all of the notes and directions before starting.

Then do two more pages of plants - don't go into any texture, focus entirely on construction and show me that you can follow the instructions you're given without skipping any points. Also be sure to start doing the homework from lessons 1 and 2 as warmups, picking a few each day before starting your main work. You can't let those exercises slip from your memory, or you'll go back to bad habits.

Regardless of how you perform on those two pages, I will mark this lesson as complete. Beyond what I've said here, I don't have anymore advice to give, so you'll have to dwell on it at your leisure beyond that point. Furthermore, there's no real benefit to continuing to hold you back - each lesson focuses on tackling the issue of construction from a different angle, so while this may not click immediately, the next lesson may have better results which may then flow back to this topic.

Still, do your best to apply what has been outlined.

Uncomfortable

2016-07-21 18:55

You've got some nice constructions in there, as well as some nice observational drawing. There are a couple points that I want to emphasize, things that have been mentioned either in this lesson or previous ones that you seem to have missed or forgotten:

• First off, you must draw through every single ellipse you draw for my lessons. It goes a long way to maintain a confident pace, which in turn helps keep the shape of your ellipses even and smooth.

• Secondly, never leave a form open - for example, where the stem of a plant continues on, and you leave its end as two lines running parallel with nothing connecting them where they stop. It's imperative that you cap off your tubes with an ellipse, as without it your form immediately flattens out.

As it stands, I believe your big shadow shapes on your page of leaves lack the understanding of texture to properly achieve the gradual transitions necessary to really pull that kind of aesthetic off. Your texture in other areas are much better though. The 25 texture challenge is likely something you'll want to dive into - though be sure to stretch it out over a long period of time while pursuing other lessons and exercises, as it's quite time consuming, and doing it all at once would both be exhausting and somewhat less effective.

Aside from all that, you've done fairly well. Feel free to move onto the next lesson.

Uncomfortable

2016-07-27 19:08

Fundamentally you're not doing anything wrong. I don't really understand what's bad about your leaves being similar to the arrows in lesson 2 - they're supposed to be, both tackle the same challenge of flat forms flowing through 3D space. The most important thing to keep in mind is that when starting off the construction (drawing the central line around which the leaf is built), you should try and think of it as a line that moves between two points in 3D space. It's easy to get caught up in the two points simply existing on the flat page, but you need to think about how each one may exist at a different level of depth, a different distance from the viewer.

Uncomfortable

2016-07-29 18:39

Definitely an improvement - I'll be marking this lesson as complete. I do have one big fat issue with your construction of leaves though. Despite all of the instructions to start simple and build up complexity, you're still starting much more complex than you need to and I don't understand why. I've mentioned it to you several times, both by linking you to the constructional method article and drawing on top of your homework. Why are you not following my instructions in this one area?

Here it is, one last time: http://i.imgur.com/IsRFFVr.png

Aside from that one issue, your general sense of form and construction has improved considerably. Feel free to move onto the next lesson.

Uncomfortable

2016-07-30 19:18

Unfortunately in order to receive a critique for this lesson's homework, you must have first submitted and completed lessons 1 and 2.

Uncomfortable

2016-07-30 23:57

Overall, I do want to mention that your homework's kind of disorganized, and that it follows less the layout of assigned homework, and more a sort of casual, unstructured bunch of doodles. The drawings themselves are actually quite nice (even those that don't quite follow the principles conveyed in my lesson) but there is a certain degree of discipline that is lacking and that will ultimately hinder your progress.

The best way to do these lessons is to set out a reasonable chunk of time to dedicate towards them. Lay out your pages thoughtfully, and most importantly don't get caught up in the art of it all. Presentation should go about as far as a clean, organized layout and avoiding wasteful drawing behaviour (sketchiness, chicken scratching, scribbling, or using several marks where one would suffice). For the purposes of these lessons, colouring really only serves as a distraction.

Anyway, onto your work - we can split the material into two parts. Tubes/cylinders (mostly plant stems, and more geometric elements like flower pots), and leaves. Your tubes and cylinders start off somewhat uncertain, but by the end of the set they're coming along quite nicely.

Your leaves, however, preeeeetty much ignore the constructional method altogether, and focus entirely on drawing from observation with no constructional component. Here's a bunch of demos on leaf construction, some of which you've likely already seen in the lesson and elsewhere:

• http://drawabox.com/viewimage/lesson3/leafconstruction.jpg

• http://drawabox.com/viewimage/lesson3/demo_leafconstruction1.jpg

• http://drawabox.com/viewimage/lesson3/demo_leavesthroughspace.png

• http://drawabox.com/viewimage/lesson3/demo_thickleaves.jpg

• http://i.imgur.com/IsRFFVr.png (the drawings on the right side, the left is another student's homework)

The core of it is that a leaf consists of numerous components. First off, there's the entire flat shape that flows through 3D space. Then there are the smaller deviations in how its edges may be frayed, or wavy, or cut in a particular way. The leaf may have thickness to it, or it may be flat. There's a lot to worry about, and trying to tackle it all at once is going to result in something that is either overly simple or something that is quite complex, but flattened out with no real flow through three dimensional space.

The solution is to break it into multiple steps, dealing with one challenge at a time. Effectively, that's the constructional method. You start off by drawing only a single line - a line that flows through space, that you perceive as moving from one point to another, from being further away to closer or vice versa. A line moving through a 3D world. Next, you build in the simplest terms possible - two basic curves with no more complexity than that - the general shape of the leaf. All you're doing is enclosing the shape, building it around the original flow-line. Now you have the basic scaffolding for your leaf, and you can start building more complex information around that.

I see what looks to be an attempt to apply this concept here: http://i.imgur.com/UX5rhcs.jpg. The problem is that the leaves do not flow at all - that central line requires much more thought, more planning, and more consideration. It may seem unimportant and simple, but it easily outweighs every other mark in terms of significance.

Now, if you go back to the lesson page, you'll notice that there's an initial exercise - the page of leaves - that I added a few weeks ago. I want you to do two pages full of leaves - don't use a small sketchbook, as the limited space will restrict your ability to think through spatial problems. Draw on standard printer paper, 8.5"x11" or larger. Fill it completely with leaves, as much as you can, then submit that to me. Don't worry if you make mistakes, just move onto the next free space on the page and continue.

Uncomfortable

2016-08-07 17:27

There are definitely some issues. As you pointed out, you're certainly struggling with leaves and petals, and I don't think you attempting to apply texture and detail to everything is helping at all. It's distracting you from focusing on construction, which needs to be nailed before you start concerning yourself with texture (which is largely unimportant).

Looking at this page, the smaller thumbnail drawings on the right side are WAY more solid than the large one on the left. First off, drawing so large that your forms get cut off is an awful idea - all of these exercises are intended to focus on getting you to understand the forms themselves and how they sit in space, so half-drawing forms is going to leave you with none of that.

Your stems are generally okay, except for two things - you're probably drawing way more contour lines than you need, and when you draw contour ellipses you're not drawing through them as you're supposed to be doing for every ellipse drawn for my lessons. Jumping back to that first point, when people draw so many contour lines, it usually tells me that they don't fully understand what they're supposed to be getting out of them. More often than not, two or three along a single for will do just fine - the intention is to communicate to yourself how the surface of that form is distorted through space, so that you start being more convinced of its existence as a 3D form, rather than a 2D shape. Also, how you space them out will have an impact on how the form reads. Spacing them out regularly will result in the forms reading as being more man-made, while clustering a couple together with another as an outlier further out will feel more natural.

For the most part, you are showing a decent understanding of how to apply construction to these drawings - just not in your actual final drawings. Your side studies are significantly better, because you're not worried about applying texture, or the resulting image being a proper "final" drawing. All of these drawings are really just that kind of side study - we don't care about creating a pretty drawing, we care about understanding the forms themselves.

I'd like you to do another four pages of plant drawings, without ANY texture or detail whatsoever. Just construction.

[deleted]

2016-08-12 04:08

Oh, I noticed that there is new exercises for this lesson. Do I have to them before getting a critique?

Uncomfortable

2016-08-12 22:43

I hope you've recovered from your tendinitis!

Your work is going in the right direction, but there is a little bit I want to emphasize on the topic of construction. In some places you do an okay job of it, while in others you skip certain steps, or don't push things far enough to properly establish your simpler forms before breaking things down into greater levels of complexity.

Here's what I mean: http://i.imgur.com/Bb031y1.png

In regards to the leaf/stem exercises, I definitely want you to go back and complete them. Once you've done that, do two more pages of plant drawings and submit that for critique.

Uncomfortable

2016-08-15 19:28

It's coming along well. Certainly plenty of room to grow, but you're moving in the right direction.

With the leaves in particular, always try to keep the flow of the leaf through space in mind. Think about how one point of the leaf is going to be farther away from the viewer, and the other is closer. This sort of sense of the depth of the world is what helps really emphasize that the leaves themselves are cutting through layers of space, rather than resting across a flat page.

I do think that in general you'd benefit from holding yourself back when it comes to putting marks down on the page. It's important to think before you put anything down, considering what purpose that line's going to serve, and whether or not it really belongs there. Lines that help you better understand each form and how it sits in space are valuable, lines whose purpose are already fulfilled by existing marks are not. Also always remember that once you've planned and prepared and ghosted a line, you want to execute it with a single stroke, and then stop yourself from following it up with any additional marks as a reflex.

Overall, I am satisfied enough to mark this lesson as complete. There is more to say, but lucky for you (or perhaps slightly unlucky since you've already completed the lesson) I updated the content of the lesson this past weekend. I switched out all three demos with new ones, and added a 40 minute introductory lecture video at the beginning. The video talks a lot about the importance of construction, and understanding that flow-through-depth-and-space that I mentioned above. Definitely give it a watch.

Anyway, I'll mark this lesson as complete. I think you'll continue to learn more about the constructional approach as you move into the next lesson. I do want to give you a heads up though - I'm hoping to update lesson 4 this coming weekend, so it might be a good idea to hold off til then. I just hope I can find the time, as it seems I've been getting bombarded with homework submissions for the past few days.

Uncomfortable

2016-08-16 19:51

I can see a few mistakes in your approach that we can work towards rectifying. Before I get into that though, I want to point out that I actually updated the lesson 3 content this past weekend. I added a 40 minute introductory video where I talk about construction and how to apply it to plants, and I also redid all three demos. Definitely worth taking a look at.

Here's a few things I noticed:

• While you're somewhat aware of the presence of 3D forms, you're trying to maintain that understanding in your head without actually drawing it entirely on the page. For example, on this page your stems flow directly into leaves with no clarification of how the cylindrical, tube-like form connects with the flatter leaf form. Also, here you're leaving your flower pot open-ended at the bottom, rather than capping it off, which causes the whole for to flatten out considerably.

• This is less about approach, but is more something you should focus on - when drawing the various sections of this cactus, you did not draw with a persistent or confident enough stroke, resulting in wobbly edges that undermined the solidity of the forms. Admittedly, this is going to be a challenge when the organic forms themselves are drawn this large, but it's definitely something to take into consideration. You might actually want to treat them more like tubes (laying down the various sectional ellipses along its length, like in the stems exercise, before connecting the outside edges).

• Your texturing is somewhat scratchy and scribbly, and you seem to be more focused on covering the surfaces rather than actually identifying the texture (or lack there of) present on an object and conveying that in your drawing. You should be perfectly comfortable not adding additional texture to a smooth surface, and whenever you do draw texture, it should be the direct result of careful observation of what little forms are present on the surface, keeping in mind that every mark or value change you see in your texture is actually the result of shadows being cast by these small forms.

• Additionally, don't treat your pen like a pencil - even if the pen is dying, and its ink doesn't flow quite right, you should still be focusing on drawing with stark black on stark white. It's a very different manner of thinking, and I go into greater detail in regards to this on the 25 texture challenge page.

Once you've had the chance to look over the new content, I'd like you to do 4 more pages of plants. I don't want you to go into any detail or texture at all - focus entirely on construction, and on creating the illusion of solid forms (in the case of the more geometric and organic ones), as well as the illusion of flatter forms flowing through the various depth levels of 3D space (moving from farther to closer).

Uncomfortable

2016-08-21 21:21

You're improving, but there's a lot of holes here, I find. I actually further developed the lesson content just last weekend - I added a 40 minute video going over introductory concepts, along with three new demos. Since you're a patreon supporter, you should have access to the video recordings of those as well.

Right now there's a few issues that I'd like to touch upon. Keep in mind that the existence of problems is inevitable - but being able to put our finger on them means that you should be able to solve them with some direction.

• General stiffness of your line work. You have a tendency to draw a little slowly, which allows for your brain to course-correct while you draw, resulting in slightly stiffer or more wobbly lines. The solution to this is to draw with a more confident pace, going just fast enough for your brain to no longer be in charge. Trust in your muscle memory, and in order to develop that muscle memory, remember that you are expected to apply the ghosting method to every mark you draw. Additionally, a few months ago I created this comic strip that discusses this particularly common issue: http://drawabox.com/comic/1.

• You have a tendency to leave shapes and forms open-ended, which immediately flattens them out and ruins their flow through space. When a form is open-ended, its surface area kind of bleeds out into the page itself (which is 2D). You don't want it to contaminate the illusion your drawing is attempting to convey. Close off every shape, cap off every form.

Aside from this, I believe that the points I raise in the new introduction to drawing plants video should help you to better understand how to approach constructing your drawings. Also, don't forget that though lessons 1 and 2 are marked as complete, you should still be continuing to practice that material regularly. Pick two or three exercises each day to do as a warmup for 10-15 minutes before starting your main work. None of these lessons end with you mastering the content. The goal here is for you to grasp the concepts I'm trying to convey, and for you to understand what you should be aiming for long-term. It's easy to get discouraged if you forget that.

I'd like you to try the homework for this lesson again - don't forget that there are two additional exercises (which you should do before starting the plant drawings) - leaves and stems, the latter of which you seem to have missed.

Uncomfortable

2016-08-23 19:32

You're doing pretty well. The only thing that really caught my eye was that in the bottom left of the very last page, that cactus type plant. I might be wrong, but it looks to me like you're being a bit sloppy with the transitions between the forms, making them flow into each other a little too much instead of having clear intersections between independent forms. This is especially noticeable in the one that is closest to the foreground of the bunch.

The cactus on the bottom left of the page before it is considerably better.

Uncomfortable

2016-08-23 18:46

For that exercise in particular, I'm on the fence, but leaning more towards just getting used to constructing them from your imagination. Getting your head around things flowing through space without worrying about all the minutia and detail of using reference.

Uncomfortable

2016-08-25 19:53

I think you've improved considerably over this set. You start off a little stiff, a little uncertain, but your confidence and your general sense of form and space has progressed a lot.

So your forms and constructions are coming along great, but I do have one thing I want to warn you away from - when texturing or detailing, try not to use hatching lines unless it's to purposely flatten something out. You have some examples of solid use of it (like when leaves twist and turn, you've applied some hatching to sections you want to denote as being the opposite side, this was quite effective). When using it as part of a texture however, it seems to come off more as you not being sure of what kind of detail or texture would fit in a particular place, but you know that you don't want to leave it empty.

The problem is that hatching is itself a texture (as any use of marks will suggest a certain surface quality), but it is virtually never a texture that fits, especially not in natural objects like plants. It's really a common fall-back that beginners tend to use, and it starts to become something of a bad habit. It will always have its positive uses (like when drawing animals, I'll always apply some straight hatching to the legs on the opposite side to separate them out and push them back), but rarely as actual texture or detail.

You do have some examples of solid texture usage here, too - on the sixth page, I especially like the texture on the leaves with the spots.

Anyway, keep that stuff in mind, and feel free to move onto the next lesson.

Uncomfortable

2016-08-28 16:37

You are veeeeeery much caught up in texture and rendering, and I honestly don't think that's working to your benefit this early on. In my intro video (which I hope you watched), I mention how I recommend that you should refrain from any texturing at all for the first half of the lesson's drawings, and this is why.

Looking at your drawings, you are getting distracted. Your focus, even when drawing the constructions, is on thoughts of how you're going to tackle your details, how you're going to tackle lighting and so on. You're not spending enough of your cognitive ability on figuring out what the basic forms that are present are, and how they interact with each other in 3D space.

Your leaves are okay though vastly overrendered. There are some good ones here as far as construction goes, but you've also got a few that go beyond the initial lay-in, and start treating it as more of a loose suggestion rather than an actual supporting scaffolding. For example, on the very last page of leaves, the bottom left - those spikey leaf shapes stop following the initial flowing shape completely. That initial shape is actually quite nice, in the way that it flows through space, but by ignoring it, your final leaf doesn't really carry any of that information.

Now, while I absolutely want you to push texturing and detailing aside for now, I will give you a few tips about that area.

If you read through the 25 texture challenge page, you'll see that I break down the process of learning how to draw texture into two stages. First you learn to properly observe ALL of the detail of an image in all of its noisy, overwhelming glory, and you copy that over. You forget about organizing any of that information, all you focus on is fighting against your brain's propensity to throw information aside the moment you look away from your reference and start working from memory. For example, if a surface has little pocks or pores or bumps, a beginner will register that and then cover the surface in bumps. Because they're no longer looking at their reference image, they're retaining no information in regards to how those bumps are arranged - are they spread out evenly across the surface? Do they cluster into groups? Is one area of the surface more dense than the other? And so on.

So, you really need to force yourself to keep looking back at your reference, never really letting yourself work from your untrustworthy memory.

The second stage is the one you seem to be attempting to tackle here - taking that information and organizing it to reduce the amount of visual noise, competing elements, etc. This has a lot more to do with using that texture you've learned to identify in the first step as a tool, using it to create smooth transitions between areas of full black and full white, and knowing where you want soft transitions, and where you want harder transitions. This of course is also all informed by looking at your reference, but you can't really do it effectively until you've gotten the first part down.

I believe you've gone into the second stage without investing enough time and practice into the first one. I think it would be a good idea for you to do the texture challenge in parallel with your other lessons (as it's going to be very time consuming if done correctly). It forces you to deal with the first stage for your every texture, and then allows you to come back down the list for the second one, ensuring that you've at least gotten some considerable amount of mileage first.

I think there's some good stuff in this submission, but a lot of it is buried by your desire to jump into texture far too early. For example, the construction of the plant on the bottom of page 8 is quite nice, though a bit small. The initial lay-in ellipses I'm seeing there seem to serve no purpose at all though. You've got some nice drawings on the two subsequent pages as well, but in general they're all REALLY small. You should be drawing bigger than that, in order to give yourself enough room to think through the spatial problems.

I'd like you to do five more pages of plant drawings, with no texture or detail whatsoever. Focus entirely on your construction. Also, I recommend that you rewatch that intro video first, and go through my demos once more.

Uncomfortable

2016-08-29 16:48

The issue is that for the most part, you're not really following my lesson material at all. You're chicken scratching all of your lines instead of applying the ghosting method, you're not constructing petals and leaves starting with the center line (aside from in the actual leaf exercise which was fairly well done), you're not drawing through your ellipses, and for the most part (aside from a few loose cylinders) you are definitely not breaking down your forms as I outlined in my demos or in my intro video.

Read the lesson again, and take another shot at the homework. It's fairly easy to get overwhelmed by the challenge ahead of you and fall back to the way you drew before taking my lessons, but you have to fight against that urge. Also, for now I recommend that you not apply any detail or texture and focus entirely on the form construction of each of your plants.

Uncomfortable

2016-08-29 17:02

There's One thing you're doing consistently that is hindering you quite a bit - you're drawing things really, really small, and it's limiting the amount of space you have to think through spatial problems. Looking at your stems/branches exercise for instance, you've got so much room on that page, but each one is tiny. This continues on until you start doing more detailed drawings, which are better in various ways - then you go back to drawing small again.

Then there's some other things that we've covered in previous lessons that you seem to have forgotten.

• You're not drawing through your ellipses - you should be drawing through them for every exercise you do for my lessons.

• You're not always taking the degree of the ellipse into consideration. I talk about this somewhat in this video. If the ellipse is as wide as a full circle, this tells the viewer that the circle it represents is facing the viewer full-on. If the degree is narrow, it means that the ellipse is turned away. In a lot of your smaller drawings, you have a tendency to draw those contour ellipses as being fairly circular, which does not convey the impression you're after.

I'd like you to take another stab at this lesson. Be sure to read through the lesson again, watch the intro video, and perhaps look through some of the material from previous lessons as well. Don't forget that you're expected to continue practicing those exercises from lessons 1 and 2 regularly, picking two or three from that pool each day to do as a warmup for 10-15 before moving onto the day's work.

Also, In this nextattempt I want you to ignore all detail and texture. Just focus on drawing the underlying forms and construction.

Uncomfortable

2016-08-29 23:26

The lessons go through various iterations of evolution, and it seems I've forgotten to update the homework section to match. I've now changed it to 8 pages of plant drawings, the first four of which may not have any texture or detail and should just focus on form and construction.

The study diagram/notes stuff was part of a previous set of demos that I replaced a couple weeks back, and I find it generally to be distracting from the core element of construction. Lay-ins pretty much relate to those first four pages - focusing entirely on construction and not on texture or detail.