Uncomfortable

2017-03-02 21:02

You're generally doing very well. I do have a few recommendations however:

• Try not to leave any of your stems open - that is, when you cut them off, don't have two parallel lines suddenly stopping. Cap them off with an ellipse in order to reinforce the illusion of volume and form.

• Draw through all of your ellipses, and draw them from your shoulder, rather than your wrist - regardless of their size. Those drawn from your wrist tend to come out more stiffly, and therefore end up a little uneven.

• You definitely have a heavy reliance on hatching/crosshatching when it comes to texture - while this isn't an uncommon thing when it comes to drawing, I strongly discourage it. I find that it's a very common fallback that keeps students from really looking closely at their reference and identifying the specific textures, the specific rhythm and flow of detail that can be captured with more purposeful and intentional marks. When we allow ourselves to simply use hatching to everything, we rob ourselves of the opportunity to look a little closer and expand our range of textures. Hatching itself really only accounts for a very small fraction of textures that exist.

• I know Peter Han's Dynamic Sketching lessons include the use of white ink and more on rendering than mine do, but my decision to leave anything but black ink out was an intentional one, as it guides students' attention and focus more towards elements I believe to be more important. I've found the use of white ink to be somewhat distracting in a way that is similar to my issue with hatching. Ultimately, while the courses are similar (and mine sprouts from what I learned from Peter), my particular path has steadily diverged in key areas. It's best for you not to mix different lesson plans, as it tends to muddy things up and makes it more likely that something's going to be missed. It would be better for you to go as far into my material as you ultimately intend, following the instructions and approach to the letter, then go back and follow Peter's separately.

• For the spherical fruits on the top of this page, note how your hatching does not follow the actual surface of the forms. The lines run straighter, rather than curving and hooking around. The result is that the forms get flattened out, because those hatching details inform the viewer how that surface distorts through 3D space.

• The further we go into the work you've done for this lesson (mostly in the last couple pages), I see a shift moving from an emphasis on construction to an emphasis on the final resulting drawing (meaning, you're less willing to draw the additional linework that helps flesh out our forms). Always remind yourself that the end result does not matter. You are not, or at least should not, be here with the hopes that you'll come out with a sketchbook full of pretty pictures to put on your fridge. Each and every drawing is a drill, and their value is in what you learn by drawing them. Focusing on the end result will keep you from making key decisions that would otherwise have helped both improve the solidity of that construction, while also improving and further developing your grasp of space. Ironically enough, when you draw confidently with less regard for the end result - and focus purely on solidity, construction, line economy and so on - the end result generally ends up better than if you go in hoping for something to show off at the end.

I do want to mention that your tree drawings are really quite well done. They show a great deal of care and patience. Just keep in mind that there is a difference between exhibiting what you are capable of right now, and working towards improving that skill level.

You may consider this lesson complete. Feel free to move onto the next one when you feel ready.

Uncomfortable

2017-03-03 21:28

So you definitely start out a little weak, a little sloppy, a little less mindful of solidity and construction - but things definitely get better by quite a bit.

The leaves where you're starting out with a more general circular lay-in aren't really too successful because they end up starting too vague (with no clear direction or flow, which is really important when working with flat forms), and then they jump ahead to be too complex in the next phase. If you're going to start out with that kind of loose general lay-in, your next step should still be to drop in your directional lines - though personally I'd start with the directional lines off the bat.

There are some leaves - like maple leaves, for instance - that naturally contain several distinct directions combined into one leaf. In that case, I'd draw the different parts as separate leaves, with separate direction lines, focusing on the flow of each one, and ultimately combining them into one.

By the time you hit that last page of leaves, things start getting better - you're more mindful of flow, and the sense that these leaves exist in three dimensional space gets stronger.

Your branches are a little hit and miss. Generally what helps emphasize the solidity of a form is avoiding any kind of odd irregularities (having forms get narrower then swell out inconsistently). As such, the first page of branches is okay, the second page feels more flimsy.

Steadily through your full plant constructions, you demonstrate a growing understanding of form, and how things fit together. One thing that I do want to draw your attention to is how you handle those sort of zoom-in bits.

Personally, I'd avoid framing it as you have. It's clear that the only purpose that sort of magnification serves is to make it seem more interesting when the drawing is finished. To be honest, it kind of messes with the presentation, but additionally (and contradictingly) you really shouldn't be worrying about how your end result ends up looking. Having it in your mind at all is really just a distraction. Focus entirely on the process of construction, as though you were ready to set the drawing on fire upon completion.

By all means, do separate drawings exploring greater detail and form of different aspects of your drawing. Just don't try to be overly fancy with how you communicate that, as it shows that your mind isn't 100% focusing on what it should be.

Anyway - by the end of this set, I think you're demonstrating a really solid grasp of how to construct solid form (the rubber tree fruit is coming along great), and flatter forms that flow smoothly through space. You're also demonstrating a lot of patience and care with the detail you work in - doing so more through construction than giving into the desire we all have to just go crazy with pasted-on details without consideration for form.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so go ahead and move onto the next one when you feel you're ready.

Uncomfortable

2017-03-06 19:03

Looks like you're doing a pretty solid job. I did initially have a few concerns that you may be pushing your details too hard, but in general it does seem like you're still very mindful of your construction. The worry about focusing too much on construction is that it can lead some students to get distracted and ultimately not pay as much attention to establishing solid forms during the construction phase. That doesn't appear to be a significant issue here, but keep it in mind as it can come up later on.

As far as your texturing goes, you have some rather successful drawings, and others that are a little less so. The latter usually occur when you let yourself get a little overwhelmed with all of the markmaking and end up relying more on less intentional, planned marks, and more on chicken-scratchy randomness. For example, the detail here is quite strong, especially in the leaves, while on this page the main volume of the plant feels a little half-assed.

Keep in mind that more detail is not always better, so try and hold yourself back and make the marks that you do decide to make really count.

Keep up the good work. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete.

Uncomfortable

2017-03-13 19:20

Not bad! In general I think you're doing well both with construction and with balancing your details and texture. It's clear that when it comes to those pipe-like branches/stems/etc. you've got some work to do in terms of getting your marks to line up so it doesn't come out chicken-scratchy and sketchy, but I can tell from the rest of your work that this is a fairly isolated area that will improve with practice.

Your general sense of form and construction shows well in many of these drawings, and you're demonstrating a great deal of patience and care. Just one minor point about your detail phase - try not to leave any white slivers in an area you've filled in predominantly with black. They tend to stand out and become quite distracting. From a compositional standpoint, this is the sort of thing you'd want to avoid. Since standard technical pens aren't the greatest for filling in space, a black brush pen can be a very handy tool for this sort of thing.

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

Uncomfortable

2017-03-15 23:51

I think that's a fair assessment. Some things are good, some things are less so. Overall though I do see some good signs that may not entirely have the chance to shine through into the drawings yet, but I'm pleased to see them.

Firstly, your leaves exercises are coming along decently in terms of how they flow through space. Secondly, your branches are coming along great. I think you've really got the solidity and flow of those tubes down quite well, which is important. This actually shows quite well in drawings like your bare tree (#2).

As you move through the drawings in the set however, I get the distinct feeling that you may be getting a little too caught up in your rendering, and the idea of drawing pretty, detailed drawings. This is causing you to take shortcuts in terms of construction which are detrimental to the solidity of the end result.

For example, I see a lot of petals on this page where you're not really following through the leaf-construction method. Most importantly, I'm not seeing any strong center-lines to determine the flow of the flat shape through space in at least some of these drawings. In #12. you started out by fleshing out the bounds of where the petals would reach (loosely), but you jumped way too far in terms of complexity, dealing with each individual spike of each petal instead of dealing with them as larger flowing forms. You've got to abide by your constructional steps more closely.

Keep in mind that construction is different from loosely sketching something in before making your "final decisions." Construction IS making final decisions, and once they're made, you need to see them through.

Overall, I am seeing a lot of good signs but they're veiled in sloppy decision making. While I might generally be okay marking this as complete, I'm going to hold off on that. I want to see three more pages of plant drawings, focusing on construction only. No detail whatsoever, just make sure you're careful building up complexity step by step, never jumping too far ahead of yourself.

Uncomfortable

2017-03-22 22:02

These are looking very nice. You're being quite mindful of your constructions, have a good sense of how those leaves flow through space and are demonstrating a strong sense of observation when it comes to the core forms that make up an object.

There's only two things I'd like to recommend:

• When applying texture, you tend to get very scribbly. Scribbling is never the right answer - it basically means that you're drawing without planning those marks, and are therefore not placing your intent on the page. You aren't always scribbling - I see some nice uses of spackling and other such things, but there definitely are areas where you seem to care a little less for that level of integrity in some of your drawings. This kind of implies in general - stop, think, plan and prepare before every mark you put down. Use the ghosting method. Don't get caught up in the feeling of drawing energetically if it means being haphazard.

• Your use of contour curves/ellipses are a little sloppy. Draw through all of your ellipses. Additionally, think about the purpose those contour curves and ellipses serve. You'll gain a lot more from one or two that have been drawn with care and consideration than from a bunch that were just laid down without much thought between them.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Feel free to move onto the next lesson. Oh, one last thing - I can't be sure, but it does look like these may have been done with a ballpoint pen. Remember that lessons 3-6 should be done with fineliners/felt tip pens. If you were using the correct tools, then ignore this point. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference from photographs.

Uncomfortable

2017-03-30 23:37

Before we get into the work itself, you really need to ease up on all that negativity. It's not an uncommon thing to see artists bashing themselves, but all you're doing is trying to label your own work as garbage before anyone else has a chance. Yeah, your work may not be the greatest, but no one expects anything of you right now. Your work's SUPPOSED to be shitty. Be proud of the effort you put into it. Until you really start to feel confident, fake it. Drawing leans heavily on one's feigned confidence, and if you go in thinking only about how you're bound to make loads of mistakes, you will hesitate before every stroke, and it will show in the results.

Whenever you sit down to draw, remind yourself: "BREAKING NEWS: ARTIST MAKES MISTAKES" is not a headline you'll ever see, because it's supposed to happen.

So, starting with your leaves exercise - the basic construction isn't bad. Your lines are a little stiff at times, a little hesitant (for the reasons previously discussed), but generally you're following the methodology well. One thing that should help add some dynamism is to think about the initial directional line around which the leaves are built as flowing from a point far away from you to a point closer to you. Your mind still seems to be a little bit trapped in the idea of drawing on a flat page, rather than the page itself being a window into an infinite three dimensional space. For this exercise, don't worry too much about going into details like those various edges. Stick to simple shapes, focus on how they flow through space.

Two things about your branches/stems. Firstly, your ellipses are looking kind of stiff, and don't demonstrate a particularly strong grasp of what those ellipses actually represent. Each one is a circle in 3D space, and its degree conveys the orientation of that circle relative to the viewer. Give these notes a read.

The other point is that you appear to be drawing your branches as long, continuous curves. Certainly admirable, but not what I instructed. Only your initial central line should be drawn in this way. Since it doesn't need to match up with anything else, it can be drawn confidently enough to keep it smooth. You don't have to worry about making it complex - in fact, don't. Complexity is not going to help you here. I've seen a lot of people who struggle with the basics of something focus on upping the difficulty of the exercise rather than dealing with the root problem - basically giving themselves more things to deal with, so they can at least conquer those. Focus on building simple stems that feel solid.

Once your central line is drawn and you've lined up your ellipses along their lengths, the lines along the sides should be drawn segment by segment, from one ellipse down and just past the next. Apply the ghosting method beforehand, and execute those marks with confidence. You WILL make mistakes. These are just drills, and as long as you approach them confidently, you'll improve with practice. You just need to be ready and accepting of the fact that you're going to fuck up frequently. Read the instructions again, and follow them to the letter.

For the rest of the work, I've got a few more points to make. Overall you're doing okay in most of the major areas, but there are a few key things that are holding you back.

• You have a tendency to rely on detail and texture to fix things once a drawing has gone south. Unfortunately, solidity is something that is born at the beginning of a drawing, and as you continue to add more things to it, that solidity can only be lost - not regained. It's very easy to get caught up in detail and texture and to lose that illusion of form in doing so.

• Be aware of the purpose contour curves and contour ellipses serve. You're overusing them in general, and this hints to me that you're not necessarily thinking about what they're for. They're there to reinforce form and to communicate to the viewer how a surface warps and deforms through space. If your marks aren't doing this properly (by correctly wrapping around forms and such), then adding a dozen more isn't going to help any further. A couple well executed contour lines are going to serve their purpose far better than a handful of sloppy ones. Also, consider how they're spaced out. Spacing them out regularly tends to make things look more stiff and man-made. Clustering a couple and having one more further out can help make things feel more natural, especially considering that these are often times artificial details we're adding ourselves.

• Flower pots are cylinders, so they should be drawn around a minor axis, as explained in the 250 cylinder challenge page.

I'd like you to take another shot at this lesson, but this time, I don't want you to add any detail or texture to your drawings. Focus entirely on construction, and on convincing yourself of the illusion of form you are creating on the page. Think about how the forms connect to one another, and how they relate to each other. Take as much time as you need - I can see that note above your ink-cap mushroom. "Speed up construction". Do not aim for speed. Your mark-executions should be done at confident paces, but they should be preceded with careful planning and consideration. And of course, above all, observe and study your reference carefully.

Uncomfortable

2017-04-05 00:50

Really nice work! Overall, I think you definitely have your priorities in order. Like you said yourself, you're clearly focusing more on construction here, and it definitely pays off. Your linework also has a certain bold, confident quality that really sells each drawing. Just a one recommendation:

While contour lines through the length of a form certainly help to reinforce the illusion of form, the strongest impact comes from capping off the ends of the form itself. Conversely, if the ends of a form are left un-capped (like just stopping as two parallel lines, or being left to continue off the edge of a page), this really flattens things out and breaks that illusion. For example, the bottom of your dandelion's stem, and even how some of your potted plants' leaves just kind of stop before reaching the soil. It's important to be more direct and concrete about how things end up - even if the form actually continues off the page, it's best to artifiically chop it there.

Aside from that, keep up the great work. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next one.

Uncomfortable

2017-04-06 02:06

Nice work! While I think you may be focusing a bit too much on texture and detail, the underlying construction is definitely all there. It's more often that I see students skip through construction too quickly and try to make up for it by going crazy on texture, and you definitely don't fall into that category. Just be aware that it's very possible to let the texture and detail of a drawing overwhelm the underlying construction and undermine its solidity. This is why I always try to err on the side of fewer marks, rather than more, when adding detail.

I have just a couple tips for you:

• Contour lines and ellipses are great for showing solidity, but you'll find that the most important ones are the actual caps of a given form - so in the case of a tube, either end. This means you can actually get away without too many contour curves through the length (maybe just a couple irregularly spaced to reinforce things), but if you neglect to cap the form off (and just have it stop as two parallel lines floating on the page), it's going to result in a form that feels very flat. I noticed this in some of your plants' stems. Alternatively, your branches exercises were all capped off nicely, and they feel solid and confident. So, even if a stem continues off the page, be sure to cap it off.

• Don't limit yourself to just a corner of each page for each drawing. While you're not suffering too much drawing smaller, it is pretty normal for people to stiffen up when drawing smaller and I do see it in some of your particularly minuscule forms. Think about how solid those branch exercises look, and then compare them to some of your really small stems. If you'd approached them at a scale where they were closer to the branches, you'd have really established those volumes nicely. Continuing to practice at a larger scale will allow you to build up the awareness of space and form that will eventually improve your smaller drawings as well.

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

Uncomfortable

2017-04-06 02:36

I flipped back to check your last attempt at this lesson, over a year and a half ago. Strangely enough, I can remember exactly what I was doing that day... ANYWAY I think it's safe to say that you've improved considerably since then.

One thing that I do want to stress though is that it's a bad idea for you to be getting into hatching as heavily as you have been. Or really, at all at this point. Hatching relates to a very small subset of textures, very few of which you'll actually encounter in these drawings. People tend to treat them as a sort of catch-all "I want to fill this area up but don't really want to think about what I'm drawing" sort of thing, and they keep students from really observing their reference carefully and thinking about what gives those objects the particular surface quality they'r seeing. What makes something rough, wet, smooth, bumpy, etc. It also tends to create a lot of high-density areas of contrast which can become very noisy and distracting. So definitely avoid it.

Additionally, keep in mind that construction is always going to be your major focus in these lessons. Texture is not. The thing about detail and texture is that it's remarkably easy to overwhelm the underlying construction and undermine its solidity by simply adding too much detail that does not jive with what you've attempted to communicate to the viewer about its basic construction. Every textural detail you put down communicates something about the curvature and nature of that surface, so if you put marks down thoughtlessly, you can contradict yourself. For this reason, it's best to be reserved with your detail marks. Always consider line economy, and try to err on the side of less rather than more.

Anyway, overall you're doing well, I just wanted to keep you from veering off into those particular pitfalls. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next one.

Uncomfortable

2017-04-20 20:27

Looking good! In general your work here is fairly well done, but I definitely notice an increase in your confidence and flexibility as you push through the set. You start off decent, though a little more timid and perhaps more concerned with the little details than the underlying construction. As you move onwards however, I can see your regard for construction and your understanding of the forms you're working with, and the space you're working within, strengthening considerably.

I can also see that you're learning your lessons - looking at this page, the flower pot on the left was okay, but since you didn't draw full ellipses for some of the decorative rims, they didn't come out that well. The pot on the right however was considerably more solid, as you drew them all the way around, allowing you to maintain a much more consistent stroke.

I think you're doing a great job, so I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Feel free to move onto the next one.

Uncomfortable

2017-04-21 17:51

I checked through my records and wasn't able to find your username listed as a patreon supporter - if you happen to be one, make sure you've sent me your username through patreon's messaging system.

Also, it's really important (and required) that those seeking critiques from me submit their work in order. Basically, the lessons are structured in such a way that each one makes it much easier to detect issues with the concepts covered there. Later lessons make it considerably more difficult to really pinpoint what the issues are.

The free community critiques (which you can receive by just submitting your work to the main subreddit) are less strict, but it's still a good idea to get a critique on the previous stuff before advancing to later lessons.

Uncomfortable

2017-04-23 00:34

So at this point there isn't a going to be much benefit from critiquing this work since issues I raised for lessons 1 and 2 cover most of it. There's just a couple things I want to point out though:

• For your branches, one thing you really need to work on is getting those segmented lines to flow into one another more seamlessly. This likely means applying the ghosting method more, and probably just practice in general. Your lines have a bit of a tendency to curve slightly when you finish them (so just after passing an ellipse), and when you start drawing your next segment, these curving bits stick out making it look like chicken scratch at a larger scale.

• I think this drawing in particular is a good example of construction, and I wanted to point it out. While your larger ellipses are still rather loose, in principle you're doing a good job of constructing each form to completion and combining them to create something more complex whilst maintaining the relative solidity that comes from the individual basic components.

• You have a bit of a tendency in other drawings to focus too much on detail, even in your leaf drawings. Remember that in all of my lessons, the main focus is construction and form. Detail is effectively superfluous and unnecessary at this point, and you may want to make a point to actually try drawing the bulk of your homework without it. You can do it for a couple pages near the end, but if you cut it out from the majority, you'll find yourself being forced to really think about those basic forms and how they all fit together.

• As I mentioned in lesson 2, draw bigger to give your brain more room to think through spatial problems.

Once we've addressed the revisions for lessons 1 and 2, and completed the box challenge, give this lesson another shot.

Uncomfortable

2017-04-24 20:47

Your confidence generally does improve over this set, but there's a few key areas that I'm noticing in general:

• You're drawing pretty small - I may have mentioned this before, but when it comes to spatial problems (like construction), our brains require much more space to think through them, especially as beginners. Conversely, when we are not confident in our ability to do something, we tend to shrink down our drawings, with some part of us feeling like it'll help hide our mistakes. This in turn has the opposite effect of making things considerably stiffer and more awkward.

• You have this tendency to draw your centerlines for your leaves and petals only part of the way, having the overall shape then encompass around it. That center line should go all the way to the end of the leaf, not stopping short. This line defines the flow of that shape, so if it stops early, you're guessing the rest of the way.

• I can see when trying the step exercises, and facing similar challenges in your drawings, you attempt to draw the entirety of a complex stem with a single line. If you look over the instructions for the stems exercise, you'll see that I recommend completing them in segments, focusing on getting those segments to flow into one another naturally. This goes back to the idea of complexity vs. simplicity - a line with lots of waves and curves will naturally be more complex than a single curve. As a result, it helps a fair bit to deal with them in sections (as long as those sections flow together and don't end up looking chicken-scratchy). You should still be applying the ghosting method appropriately to each stroke, of course. Basically when you try to draw each one in a single stroke, you end up drawing rather slowly-and-carefully, resulting in overly stiff lines that don't flow well.

I'd like you to try doing another two pages of the leaves exercises, two pages of branch exercises, and then three pages of plant drawings. Don't go overboard with the contour lines in your leaf exercises, they're not really serving any purpose.

Uncomfortable

2017-04-24 21:30

Fantastic work! You're definitely nailing all of the major points I wanted to see for this lesson. You're doing a great job of capturing flat shapes as they flow through three dimensional space organically. You're also establishing solid volumes and really pushing that sense of solidity. Lastly, you're building up your constructions from simple components and building up complexity in successive passes, never skipping steps or jumping ahead.

I really have no critique to offer, so keep up the great work and feel free to move onto the next lesson. I genuinely hope you'll leave a little room for me to offer some helpful advice in the next one :P

Uncomfortable

2017-04-29 16:45

Nice work! You're definitely paying lots of attention to the basic principles of construction, and are focusing on establishing your basic, simple forms rather than getting too caught up in all of the complexity present in each object you draw.

I can see that you are definitely interested in going into detail and texture a fair bit, so on that note I have a bit of advice for you. What we're effectively doing in all of this is not just drawing, but it's communication through a visual medium. Every mark we put down serves a purpose to convey an idea to the viewer. The marks of our initial construction describe how a form sits in 3D dimensions, how surfaces deform through space, and so on. The marks we put down for our textures communicate the features that exist there, so as to describe that surface quality. If it's rough, bumpy, wet, sticky, smooth, etc.

A problem can arise when the marks present in a drawing contradict each other. Features of the underlying construction could state that a surface is rounded, while the lines used to build up texture and detail can instead communicate that the surface is flat. This is what generally makes a drawing look off - different channels of communication insisting different things.

So it's very important to always remain aware of the underlying construction when putting down your texture and details. Always remember how your textural marks must wrap around forms (getting more condensed around the edges of a rounded form, and so on) in order to always reinforce the same idea that is communicated by the previous construction. Because of this, it's also generally better to draw less rather than more when putting down texture. We don't necessarily have to replicate every detail and mark present in our reference image - all we're doing is communicating a concept to build up an illusion. The viewer's eye, if everything fits together properly without contradiction, is often more than willing to fill in the blanks.

The last thing I want to mention - and I expand on this somewhat in the texture challenge is that texture is generally really just made up of a lot of other small forms present on the surface, and the marks that we actually see and draw are shadows. So if you have a series of bumps on a surface, it will naturally look rather cartoony if you draw those bumps as little circles with a continuous enclosing line. Instead, consider the fact that light hits that bump on one side, causing the shadow to appear more strongly on the other. This also means those bump-shadows can blend together into a larger continuous shape.

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

Uncomfortable

2017-05-04 20:35

So you've got a lot of examples of solid progress here, but I am noticing some underlying issues that we should be able to deal with. First and foremost, I'm not entirely sure how big the pages you're drawing on are but I encourage you to use as much room as you have for each drawing. This will allow you to draw more confidently, using more of your arm and body.

The pitcher plant I think is a good example of your drawings getting too cramped, and resulting in linework that is quite hesitant and uncertain.

Additionally, remember that we're drawing objects that exist in three dimensions - some of the drawings here that feel a bit weaker do so in part because they seem to exist more on the flat plane of the page they're drawn on, rather than having the page serve as a window to a larger three dimensional space. This may sound a bit lofty and abstract, but there's an easier way of thinking about it:

Three dimensional space has that third dimension. The dimension of depth. We don't necessarily automatically think about it, or think about the option for the forms we draw to plunge further into the depth of a scene, as beginners. Forcing yourself to consider that, especially with exercises like the arrows from lesson 2, and the branches and leaves from this lesson, can help you to push your willingness to exploit it.

More than anything, it's very important that you convince yourself that you're drawing three dimensional forms - your own willingness to buy into this illusion comes through in your drawings. If you believe a circle you've drawn is actually a sphere, your brain will resist you when you try to draw a straight line across it - it'll demand that you arc your line, wrapping around that sphere's surface.

Here's a few other more specific, more minor suggestions:

• Draw through all of your ellipses. I noticed your ellipses stiffening up, especially when you attempt to hit them in a single round.

• Remember to draw from your shoulder, not your wrist or your elbow.

• Do not go overboard with your contour lines. We are not building wireframes here - a couple well thought out and well executed contour lines that do their job of running along the surface of a three dimensional form are far more effective and produce a far stronger illusion than a dozen drawn quickly and sloppily.

• While I'm open to drawing contour lines in any direction (longitudinal, latitudinal, or something in between), I often find that running along a cross-section perpendicular to the general flow of a form is best especially when dealing with cylindrical forms. The reason is simple - if I can capture the line as a very simple curve or ellipse, I don't have to worry about ending up with a disjointed line. An ellipse is one of the basic things we practice, and so we're far more effective at using them as contour lines than, say, the lines you drew going down the length of the left side of this page, where the line goes over different bumps, having its flow and direction change.

After reading what I've said here, I'd like you to do two more pages of plant drawings. I think you've already had some interesting successes, especially with the copy of the potato plant demo, but overall I want you to push the illusion of three dimensional form, explore the dimension of depth and consider how forms flow from being farther away to closer to the viewer. Also, remember - draw bigger! Your sketchbook honestly may be somewhat restrictive, though I don't know how large it is.

Oh, one last thing - draw with greater confidence. I can see a lot of signs of hesitation, where you're afraid of either making mistakes, or drawing lines that may interfere with your ability to make a drawing clean later on. We are not at all concerned with the end product. We are not producing beautiful drawings, we are performing exercises, whose purposes are to help us better understand form and construction.

Uncomfortable

2017-05-06 17:50

While I do think you're moving in the right direction, there are a few important things I want to bring to your attention:

• The constructional method is all about going from the simplest possible expression of a form and building up from there. You have some decent examples of this in many of your leaves, but you've also got some that definitely undermine this concept. One strong example is the leaf with three separate sections in the middle of the first page. Additionally, the leaves on this plant are considerably wavier and therefore more complex than their first pass ought to be.

• You're very focused on detail and texture, but there are a few issues with how you approach it. From what I can see, when drawing the underlying construction, your mind seems to be jumping a few steps ahead, as though you're already focused on how you're going to try tackle detailing the drawing. It's extremely important that you not let your mind stray from the step you're on. When you're putting down the initial construction, you need to be focusing on how those forms sit in space, how they flow through space, and how they relate to one another. Your focus needs to be on building up the illusion that what you're drawing is three dimensional. If you end up focusing on detail at this phase, you're going to end up with a drawing that feels flat. The other issue is that while I can see signs that you're improving on this front, you do need to push yourself to work less from memory and more from direct observation. When beginners try to carry over detailed information, they'll look closely at a reference for a while, then draw for several minutes. Then they'll repeat this process. Whenever you look away from your reference, your brain starts throwing away important pieces of information and simplifying things into cartoony representations of what they actually are. This is ultimately what you end up drawing from when you work from memory - even if the memory is just a few moments old. Therefore it's important that you look away only for a second or two to put down a couple of marks before returning to your reference image. I talk about this more over at the 25 texture challenge.

Looking at your branches exercise, one thing that stands out to me is how at the end of each line segment, we can visibly see how your lines diverge. The exercise has you draw down to the next ellipse/cross-section and then overshoot it slightly, then start again at that ellipse and repeat. What you need to work on is ensuring that the overshooting and the subsequent line overlap nicely so you don't end up with these little bits diverging, as it tends to look somewhat more chicken-scratchy. This often means taking more care when overshooting to make sure you keep it on a similar trajectory as what the subsequent line will have.

I also noticed that in your actual plant drawings, you tried drawing long stems and other tube-like forms all in one go, instead of following the method covered in the branches exercise. This may have been because you didn't like this sort of divergence issue. That said, the result here was that your lines were considerably more stiff and less confident, and the resulting forms did not feel entirely solid. Your best bet here is to continue working on decreasing that divergence, and ultimately using that method in your larger drawings.

While overall you're making a fair bit of progress, before I mark this lesson as complete, I'd like to see one more page of the branch/stems exercise, and then three more pages of plant drawings. For these plant drawings, I want to see construction only - no detail or texture whatsoever. I believe you should be able to focus more easily on construction if detail is taken out of the equation for the time being.

Uncomfortable

2017-05-08 22:29

These are certainly looking better. There's definitely room to grow, but you're moving in the right direction. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next lesson.

Uncomfortable

2017-05-09 19:44

One thing that really stands out to me is that when drawing many of your leaves, you jump into a level of detail more complex than you're meant to. Specifically, the lowest level of leaf construction I often see in your drawings involves a wavy edges, rather than a simple curve flowing from the stem of the leaf to the tip. The point of this initial construction is to establish its flow through space - not to worry about any internal details. For examples of what I mean, take a look at the "Other Demos" section of the lesson.

The thing is, I do see examples where you use a simple curve on one side of the leaf, but end up going more complex on the other side. For example, the bottom one on the right side of this page.

Additionally, on a much more subtle level, I'm noticing signs that you're a little bit timid when putting down your line weight, in a way that suggests that you're preoccupied with the idea of creating a nice end result (actively trying to hide your constructional line work so it doesn't mess with potential details you may add).

In general you're demonstrating a decent grasp of 3D space, but I'd like you to do another three pages - specifically geared towards showing me that you can draw each stage of your construction confidently, focusing on the strokes you're putting down right then and there, and not getting caught up in trying to hide them for later.

Uncomfortable

2017-05-18 21:24

Very nice work! You've got a lot of great examples of solid construction here, and I can clearly see with most of them that you're taking your time, going from simple blocking in and gradually increasing complexity with subsequent passes.

The only thing I want to mention though is that when approaching these drawings, remember that they are just exercises - our focus is not in producing a pretty drawing at the end, but rather in what we understand in regards to how our forms sit in 3D space and how they interact with one another. To this end, you should avoid drawing your earlier passes more faintly, or trying to hide construction in this way. If you don't draw these forms more confidently, the underlying construction will be somewhat weaker and feel less solid. In turn, this will impact later passes, as the foundation on which they rest won't be as sturdy.

Always remember that the smaller the detail, and the later in the drawing process a mark is made, the less important it is in the grand scheme of things. Therefore worrying too much about texture or detail, or putting a mark down for aesthetic reasons rather than actually fleshing out how it fits in with all of the other forms, is not the best possible use of your time.

When saying this, I am referring specifically to things like your venus fly traps, which are definitely weaker in regards to construction. Here you merely loosely sketched the underdrawing and then went to town drawing exactly what you saw without taking the time to understand how it all sit in 3D space. This trains you to reproduce an image effectively, but not to construct something new later on.

Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Feel free to move onto the next lesson.

Uncomfortable

2017-05-25 01:55

One thing that really jumps out at me across the board is that your mind is more focused on the details and textures of each drawing, rather than the establishment of the basic forms, and the principle of going from the simplest possible expression of how things occupy and flow through space, to more complex levels of visual information. Always remember that detail is not important - it may seem like the part of the drawing that matters most (because that's what beginners always receive the most compliments on from those who aren't familiar with drawing), but it's really the underlying structure that matters. You want to focus on constructing the illusion that your drawing occupies 3D space, rather than simply being lines running across a flat page.

Here are some notes about your approach to leaves.

Looking at your branches, a couple other things jumped out at me:

• Draw your lines more confidently. There's lots of signs here that you're hesitating and slowing down (because it's legiitmately quite difficult to draw two lines that run alongside each other whilst maintaining a consistent distance between them). Don't shy away from making those mistakes though - it is by making mistakes that you will learn. If you avoid them, you'll end up with wobbly linework, and wobbly lines aren't very good at conveying solidity, which is key when constructing 3D forms.

• Draw through each and every ellipse you draw for my lessons. This helps keep them evenly shaped, and also helps you maintain a confident pace while drawing them.

• We tend to deal with spatial problems (like construction) better when we draw larger on the page, so particularly small or narrow branches will naturally be difficult. We can't always avoid this, but it is something to keep in mind.

Your mushroom is a good example of the importance of drawing through your forms. This means drawing not only the parts of the forms that you see, but also what is occluded. Take a look at this mushroom demo from the construction article. Notice how I draw each form in its entirety? This helps me understand how those forms sit in 3D space and how they relate to one another.

I think there are a lot of signs in this lesson that you are gradually grasping a good deal of the material and the principles of construction, but pushing your priorities more towards construction rather than detail is definitely in order. I'd like to see you do four more pages of plant drawings, this time focusing entirely on construction with no detail or texture whatsoever. Make sure you draw each line confidently, and accept that once you've ghosted through the drawing motion and generally prepared all you can, mistakes MAY still happen and that is perfectly okay.

Uncomfortable

2017-05-25 02:02

Definitely not bad. There's a lot of strong work here that demonstrates a developing grasp of the constructional method and the principles it espouses. One thing about plants that can generally be quite challenging for beginners is that there's often a lot of complexity in how different forms connect to one another, and in general, there's just a lot going on. Of your two potted plants, I think the first one definitely succumbed to that overwhelming complexity, but the second fared much better.

One very important thing to keep in mind here is the importance of structure over detail. Whether you choose to push a drawing into texture and detail really shouldn't be something you think about or allow to influence your approach until you've fleshed out a solid construction that captures the majority of the object. This is where most beginners tend to struggle - they get caught up in wanting to capture the variety of textures present, and it ends up occupying their minds as they work through the construction. Constructing while distracted results in a weaker underlying foundation for the rest of the drawing, as well as one that ends up being much more disorganized. The mushroom and the lemon are definitely examples of this in your work.

Anyway, in general you're doing reasonably well, so I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Feel free to move onto the next lesson, where you'll continue to be pushed to think about 3D space and how the forms you're drawing all fit together.

Uncomfortable

2017-05-26 23:57

Really lovely work. You're demonstrating an exceptional grasp of form and 3D space, and you're not allowing the stress of adding detail and texture to distract you from the constructional phase as many people do. You focus entirely on what you're drawing right then and there, and you leave future problems for later. That's exactly how it should be done. You're also confident with your linework, and while you clearly draw some lines a little more faintly (which tends to hinder the confidence and smoothness of those lines), those lines still come out looking bold in all ways except their weight, so that's totally fine.

As far as texture goes, you do have a lot of great experimentation here, and that is exactly what is expected. A sense for texture requires the development of both a visual library (by doing experimentation like this), and more experience with different ways to tackle particular surface qualities. The lessons here are primarily focused on learning how to apply construction, but your use of texture is coming along exactly as it should be. Continue experimenting, and continue allowing yourself to make mistakes, as that is what will help you figure out what works well and what doesn't. The only recommendation I have in this particular case is to try and use less hatching. For example, in places like your bottle palm, it tends to feel more generic and doesn't quite express the more specific texture you're after. Hatching is often used in this way, and I find that if students simply force themselves to stop using it, they find themselves more likely to look deeper and see the patterns and rhythms that exist in their objects.

Anyway, keep up the great work. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next one.

Uncomfortable

2017-05-28 16:08

What stands out the most to me is that you're not really following the leaf construction approach explained in the lesson. You tend to start off at a much more complex state (with wavy edges to your leaves and so on), rather than starting off with a simple curving line for each side of the leaf and then building up that complexity in later passes within the structure you've already laid down.

Here are some notes covering some of the major issues I've seen in your submission. I'd like you to read through them, then read through the lesson again (as well as rewatch the intro video), then try again. Also make sure you've read through the construction article and look at the demos shown there.

Then I'd like you to do four more pages of plant drawings with no detail or texture whatsoever.

Uncomfortable

2017-05-28 17:33

There's definitely some good here, but there's a lot of places where you're not applying construction and instead jump in far too complex, way too early. The reason we want to start simple is because simpler forms are much easier to draw with a sense of solidity. A simple ball, a sausage-shaped organic form, a simple tube, a basic leaf shape made from a directional line and basic enclosing curves, etc. It's pretty straight forward to focus on how these things sit in 3D space, and therefore making them feel tangible is considerably easier. From there, we use this simpler foundation as a scaffolding on top of which to build up more complex information, and over several successive passes, we reach a much higher level of detail whilst maintaining solidity and believability all the way through.

Now I do see a general grasp of construction in many of your drawings, but it's more of a vague thing floating in the back of your mind, rather than your primary focus. For example, the directional lines of many of your leaves are not planned out as well as they could be, nor are they drawn with the sort of confident, persistent pace that conveys a strong directional flow through 3D space. I quite like this drawing, but those directional lines feel weak and wobbly, so they lay down a pretty weak foundation for the rest of the drawing.

Your Queen Anne's Lace obviously starts off with a very loose, poorly constructed hemisphere, but that's about as far as you go with your construction. I actually remembered that I had done a demo for a student for this very same plant, and while it's quite old, it should help how one might approach it constructionally: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWwCp5ozRNg.

Another thing I see is loose, scribbly, largely thoughtless attempts at texture. For example, here and the bulb of this flower, although to a lesser extent. Never rely on any kind of randomness - every mark you put down should be planned and considered, and should reflect some clear intent on your part.

I actually quite liked this one, as the texture was clearly thought through (although it doesn't quite wrap around the trunk of the tree that well). Additionally, the leaves look especially solid due to their being left relatively blank as far as texture goes, along with the strong use of line weight.

Lastly, your attempt at barley seemed to largely devolve more into arbitrary sketching than construction. I can certainly understand why - students tend to fall back to old methods when they're overwhelmed or uncertain how to deal with a problem. It's important that you discipline yourself and hold true to the specific, planned approach of construction however.

While I'm on the fence, I am going to mark this lesson as complete. I feel that the next lesson should give you ample opportunity to focus your attention on construction. I do highly recommend however that you try and separate out the process of construction and texture - I see a few signs here that they're getting a little muddled together, and it's quite common for me to see students who get distracted by the fact that they will be adding texture and detail, to the point that they don't end up spending as much time on construction which frankly is the far more important phase. Either doing more drawings with no detail whatsoever, or taking pictures of them before adding detail (and submitting those with your homework) will put added pressure to focus more in that area.

Uncomfortable

2017-05-31 22:33

You're definitely moving in the right direction, but there are a few things I'd like to point out that should help.

Your leaves are generally looking pretty good (I'm more focused on the simple ones that focus on basic construction - try not to fuss too much about detail right now, as that is not particularly important). Those two that are bare flow quite nicely through space. The more detailed ones do tend to feel a little bit more stiff - this often happens when we know we're going to detail something. It causes us to be too careful and hesitant when putting down lines, concerning ourselves with what will show through in our "final drawing". The way to avoid this is to remember that the final drawing doesn't matter - these are all just exercises and drills, so everything should be drawn with full confidence, thinking only of how things sit in 3D space.

For your branches, take a look at those instructions again. I can see that you attempted to draw the full length of each branch with a single stroke. Because of this, you hesitated a lot with your lines, and ended up quite stiff and wobbly. The instructions talk about dividing the segments, and focusing our efforts instead on making those segments flow nicely together (to avoid a hairy, chicken-scratchy look). This allows you to maintain confident strokes with a single direction and flow, rather than something that twists and turns a lot. Of course, this will also apply to similar plant constructions, like that pitcher plant.

Your later constructions definitely show a lot of promise, though one thing that I'm noticing is that you're being a bit loose at times with your linework. For example, take a look at that mushroom. The ellipses are kind of vague, you're not drawing through them, and those things don't show a lot of signs of being carefully planned and executed using the ghosting method. Your mind seemed to be more on the texture of the thing, rather than that underlying construction.

For this one, I do like how lively and gestural those leaves look - they do feel like they're flat objects flowing through 3D space, which is great. There are a couple things that could definitely have been better however. Firstly, construct all cylindrical objects around a minor axis. You can take a look at the cylinder challenge notes for some more info on that, but I did see you apply that approach in some of your other constructions. Secondly, that texture you applied to use it - the crosshatching - was very flat. Remember that texture wraps around the form beneath it - the lines you drew did not take into consideration the curvature of the cylindrical form. Instead, this flat crosshatching tells the viewer that the surface is in fact not curved at all, so the whole image flattens out considerably. Also, again, draw through your ellipses.

I'd like you to take another stab at this lesson, but this time, don't include any textures or details. Focus entirely on taking your time with each construction. Plan everything out, and be more mindful of how you place your marks, your ellipses, and so on. It's actually quite often that I see students get too caught up in texture and detail, to the point that it distracts them from the real meat of the lesson. Forcing them to focus on this particular part usually yields much better results.

As for your question, you can make one-time donations via paypal. I feel like reddit might have rules about mentioning your email, so instead I'll point you to the giveback page. Third paragraph down has information in donating via paypal. Thanks in advance!

Uncomfortable

2017-06-02 23:36

As far as construction goes, things are coming along okay. I can see signs that you're thinking about things in three dimensions, and building up a sense of how the forms connect to one another, and how they sit in space. I also see signs that you are thinking about how your leaves flow, as flat shapes moving through 3D space. There is of course plenty of room to improve on these points, and I recommend that you look through the notes I posted last week, but you're moving in the right direction.

There are a few things that definitely need work however. I've outlined them in these notes.

I'd like you to do four more pages of plant drawings, but I want you to leave any and all detail out and focus entirely on construction. This means that everything you put down should be a form of its own - anything else that would ultimately be drawn without volume or without an understanding of how it sits in 3D space, should be left out.

Uncomfortable

2017-06-02 23:58

Your leaf and branch exercises are looking decent, although there's definitely a lot of stiffness in your plant drawings. Here's some redlining/notes that mention some of your major issues.

Additionally, I noticed that you have a tendency to start your leaves out with ellipses in your plant drawings. Note that this is not part of the instructions on how to tackle leaves from the lesson. As a result, they end up lacking a sense of how those leaves flow through 3D space, and end up feeling quite flat. At times your linework also ends up being somewhat erratic, at times sketchy, which gives me the impression that when frustrated or somewhat overwhelmed, you respond poorly to that stress. When faced with a situation like that, put your pen down and step back - don't respond to it by drawing. Think about the problem you're facing and think about how it relates to the lesson and the stuff I mention in the introductory video. Take your time, and plan out your strokes using the ghosting method. Draw confidently, but not without forethought.

In addition to the redlining from above, I'd also like you to give the notes I posted earlier this week a read through. They talk about a lot of overarching and common issues students face, especially when first breaking into the whole constructional drawing thing.

Also, when drawing those contour ellipses and contour curves, don't forget this.

Once you've had a chance to review the material, and reread the lesson itself, I'd like you to try another four pages of plant drawings. For these, don't include any texture or extraneous detail. Focus entirely on constructing your forms, and considering how they connect to one another. Additionally, take the time to observe your reference images more carefully. There are certain places where you definitely slipped back into working from memory - for example, the grass at the base of these mushrooms.

Uncomfortable

2017-06-08 02:36

As far as the drawings themselves go, they're quite nice and demonstrate some fairly well developed observational skills. Your earlier ones (before that 2 month gap) also do demonstrate that you're getting the hang of construction as well, though the last two end up weighing too heavily on the observation side, focusing far too much on detail than on the underlying construction.

Here's a few things that stood out to me overall:

• You're definitely noticeably focused on the end result, rather than the construction. Remember that these exercises are not about creating a pretty end result, but rather about the actual process of drawing. Don't hide construction lines, or purposely draw them faintly. Drawing things faintly goes hand-in-hand with not applying very much confidence to those strokes, and in turn it results in forms that fall a little flat. Draw all of your linework confidently. You can come back later to emphasize certain lines by giving them additional weight (that doesn't mean darkening an entire shape, but rather specific areas to clarify overlaps and such - we're not cleaning up a sketch or anything like that).

• You've got a lot of cylindrical flower pots, so they should be constructed as cylinders - that means starting with a minor axis. Similarly for anything box like, draw through your boxes in order to maintain a better understanding of how they sit in 3D space.

• Your leaves are generally okay until the 2 month gap. Examples like these don't follow the process of going from simple to complex.

This is ultimately totally normal, when it comes to people stopping for several months. I'd like you to do three more pages of plant drawings after you've had the chance to go through the lesson material again, with one added requirement - I want these drawings to be 100% construction, no detail whatsoever. Additionally, don't forget that you are expected to keep up with the lesson 1 and 2 material as regular warmups, and I imagine you've fallen a little behind on that.

Uncomfortable

2017-07-02 01:04

I think it's fair to say that you started off a little timid and unconfident in your approach. Your initial few pages definitely felt a little weak, but not usually in the way that I come across from my students. There was definitely a pattern, that you were tackling things of at least a certain level of complexity, but not quite stepping down a few rungs and working your way back up. For example, your leaves were almost always quite twisty, which can be quite difficult to wrap one's head around. When it comes to getting the basics of understanding how a flat shape can flow through space, a simpler leaf that simply bends a little through its length (rather than folding back on itself, or twisting) can really help to develop the mental model one requires to delve further.

All that said, after page 14, things change considerably. Your drawings pick up a more tangible sense of solidity, your forms read as existing in three dimensional space, rather than sitting on a flat page, and in general your constructions feel more cohesive. It seems like at that point, the idea of construction clicked a little, and this in turn allowed you to draw much more confidently.

There's still one thing I want to stress - more in relation to the previous pages, but it's an important thing to mention. Hold yourself back a little. I see a lot of cases where you've drawn and redrawn the same lines a couple times, or have gone over things to replace previous lines with cleaner ones. If you make a mistake, leave it. The habit of correcting things immediately is a dangerous one to get into. Apply the ghosting method to every mark you put down - this means having to plan each one out, and prepare beforehand. It eliminates the possibility that you're going to be drawing anything reflexively (like how many of us immediately follow up a mark with an extra one).

Just keep that in mind in the future. As you became more confident in your approach, these things definitely decreased, so I'm really only mentioning it in case you slide back in the future. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next one.

Uncomfortable

2017-07-03 23:14

Overall you're doing very well. Your leaves flow organically through 3D space, you're utilizing the basic concepts of constructing primitive forms to build up more complex objects, and you're largely focusing more on that basic construction rather than getting distracted by detail. I have a few things to recommend that should help as you continue to move forwards:

• On this page you've got a few examples of leaves with multiple sections, many of them being maple leaves. It's good that you've experimented with how to approach them - I would recommend treating each section as a separate leaf (so with its own central directional line), and then at the end fusing them all together. Next to the potted fern plant (directly to the left of it), you've got an example where you tried to flesh out each section individually, but that enclosing shape ended up being very complex. Avoid any and all complexity when starting out, and work your way up to it. In general you do follow this rule pretty well, but with these maple leaves you have more of a tendency to skip steps.

• Draw through all of your ellipses. This will keep them evenly shaped, and therefore much more reliable when applied to constructing solid forms.

• Draw through your forms. That potted fern on your first page is a great example of doing it right - you're not hiding any lines, you're drawing each form in its entirety. This gives you a very solid understanding of how it sits in 3D space. Compare this to the potted plant on the left side of this page, and you can see that by not drawing through your cylinders, you end up with forms that feel much less solid. I also noticed that in other similar cases, you started drawing more loosely (like the left side of this page, which are definitely aesthetically pleasing, but don't really serve us too well here. Remember that our goal here is to go through these drawings as exercises that help us better understand how objects sit in 3D space. Drawing through our forms can even apply to situations like the cacti in the bottom left, where you only partially drew the cacti in the back, but did not draw where they were occluded by those in front. This in turn gives us a weaker grasp of how those back ones sit in space.

• Draw bigger. You're definitely trying to cram a lot into each page, which while in theory is great (and actually looks pretty impressive), you're drastically limiting the amount of space you can dedicate to each object. Construction is very much a spatial problem, and our brains benefit from being given more room to think through them.

Anyway, keep up the great work and keep the points I raised above in mind. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next one.

Uncomfortable

2017-07-08 23:28

While your work is generally moving in the right direction, I'm getting the overall impression that your brain is still somewhat trapped into thinking largely in two dimensions - those defined by the page you're drawing on - rather than a larger three dimensional space to which your paper is merely a window.

So to that end, I recommend giving these notes a read. It covers this common issue, as well as a few others that I'm seeing in your work.

Second point - watch the alignment of your contour ellipses when drawing those branches. You've got to keep them aligned to the central minor axis line, such that it cuts each ellipse into two equal, symmetrical halves. Give these notes a read as well.

Thirdly, I definitely feel that when it comes to your leaves, you're blurring the lines between contour curves (which serve a specific purpose), and detail (like the lines that run along the surface of a leaf). There definitely is some overlap, in that we can take advantage of some of the lines that exist on an object and simply use them as contour lines to describe the surface of that form, but at the stage where we're focusing on construction, focus on the constructional aspect of it. That is, describing the distortion in space of the surface. Don't get caught up in drawing each line. As far as contour lines go, a couple well placed ones are generally plenty effective.

Lastly, watch your linework! I see a lot of hesitation there, where you're not executing your marks confidently, so they come out a bit wobbly and stiff. Always remember the ghosting method, where you invest your time in the preparation, and then execute with confidence. You may make mistakes as far as accuracy goes, but that's totally fine. The flow and smoothness of your linework is far more important.

Oh, and also worth pointing out - I see six pages of plant drawings, plus one page of leaves and one page of branches. The homework section asked for eight pages of plant drawings, so ten total. Either way, once you've had the chance to read through what I mentioned above, try your hand at another four pages of plant drawings. Avoid detail and focus entirely on construction (you mostly did this here as well, but I figured I should mention it explicitly).

Uncomfortable

2017-07-13 23:25

One thing that stands out to me is that you're a little distracted by detail, and as a result are skipping some integral steps of construction. This is especially the case when it comes to your leaves. You certainly do put a lot of effort into considering how to convey certain lighting or textures, but you fail to take certain steps that would ultimately help you develop a better sense of how each object sits in and flows through space.

For example, it's important for you to start your leaves out with the simplest shape that establishes how they flow through space, as shown here (sorry about the broken lines, I had to draw that on a tablet and after drawing on a cintiq for a couple years, my ability to do so has gone down the drain). Don't concern yourself with all the wavy edges, focus on the general flow of the leaf and establish that. The rest can be constructed within the framework of your initial simple shape. This allows you to tackle one challenge at a time, instead of many at once.

Additionally, draw through your forms. If you take a look at this page, you can see that your leaves stop where they are occluded by their neighbours. This reduces your understanding only to what is depicted in two dimensions, and doesn't do much to develop your mental model of 3D space. Also for that same page, remember how cylinders are constructed. Make sure you build anything remotely cylindrical around a minor axis to ensure your ellipses are aligned.

For the branches exercise, I noticed that your line segments don't flow into each other. While it's fine to construct the tubes segment by segment, it's very important that you flow from one segment into the other, rather than having a segment veer off to the side, and then ignore that with your next. The end result should look like a single continuous stroke.

I also noticed that when drawing similar branch forms in your plant drawings, you tended to leave them open-ended. As I mention in the bottom right of these notes, leaving them open will flatten your forms out. Instead, capping them with an ellipse will help reinforce their form.

All that said, there's a lot of good qualities here as well. As far as your simpler leaves and petals go, they flow nicely through space (like these petals). I just think that you're very preoccupied with creating pretty drawings, and as such are missing the real point of these exercises, which is all about challenging your brain to work through spatial problems, and to build a mental model of how these forms relate to each other in three dimensions. Drawing through forms, and developing things up from simple to complex goes a long way to build up this internal sense.

I'd like you to do another five pages of plant drawings, but with no detail or texture whatsoever. Focus on building up forms only.

Uncomfortable

2017-07-13 23:37

Really excellent work. Your constructions are very strong, and you clearly understand how each form sits in 3D space, and I'm very pleased to see that you're not being too precious about trying to hide constructional lines in favour of creating a prettier end result.

Just be sure to draw through your ellipses, and to draw each form in your drawing in its entirety, even when it is occluded by other forms. For example, if you have a cluster of leaves, draw each leaf completely rather than just where they are not hidden by others. Drawing them completely will give you a fuller grasp of how each one sits in 3D space. You certainly do this to certain degrees, but there are places where you don't (like here and here), and those tend to be your weaker drawings.

Overall, you're doing very well. Keep up the great work, and consider this lesson complete. Feel free to move onto the next one. As for overtime, I haven't had a day off in 25 days! :D

Uncomfortable

2017-07-14 18:32

You're doing a pretty decent job, and I'm noticing considerable improvement over the set. I noticed that you weren't drawing through your ellipses in your branches, but near the end of the lesson, you seem to have changed your approach for the better in that regard (like in the pitcher plant). Make sure you draw through all of your ellipses though, especially when constructing sphere/ball-like forms, as it goes a long way to keep the shape even, and ultimately make the form feel more solid. Additionally, you're doing a good job of progressing through your constructions in phases, starting simple and building up to greater levels of complexity.

Lastly, your leaves are doing a pretty good job of flowing through 3D space in a convincing manner. The only thing in this regard that did catch my eye though is that you may be getting a little caught up in leaf texture/detail, to the point that it may be distracting you a little from that underlying construction and establishment of flow. As a result, your simpler leaves tend to flow much better. Keep this in mind - extra worrying about detail can definitely draw your attention away from where it needs to be at the moment, especially when you're getting caught up in that part of a drawing too early.

Overall, you're doing a solid job. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next one.

Uncomfortable

2017-07-17 20:12

Overall you're doing very well. Your constructions feel quite solid, and you're demonstrating a good grasp of how forms sit in 3D space and how they relate to one another.

One thing that I wanted to point out however is that when you go through your first stage, you have a tendency to 'rough' things in, exploring your space, building a sort of suggestion for yourself. Keep in mind that this isn't the same as what we're after when constructing. We're not loosely sketching something in, rather we're defining its bounds and then abiding by them through later steps - even if they're a little bit off. So for example, the petals on these flowers would extend only to the perimeter of the ellipses you put down before them. This way the decision of how far they reach out is determined in a previous, separate step, and when you're actually drawing the petals, you no longer have to worry about that. Construction is all about breaking things down into steps. This applies to your leaves as well, where you tend to

There certainly is value to being able to loosely explore space without this sort of commitment, but what we're doing right now is a more stringent practice of construction itself, and working within the confines of our previous decisions.

Additionally, when your drawing gets cut off by the side of the page, try not to have the it just stop suddenly. You always want your forms to be capped off in order to reinforce their three dimensional nature. Leaving two parallel lines running down and suddenly stopping really flattens out the image.

For these bulbs, I think you established the underlying volumes quite well, but it would have worked out better had you treated each petal as a separate leaf-like form, first establishing its flow, then the entirety of its form.

As for your question, it's really important to keep in mind that this is purely an exercise. We're not drawing these plants to produce beautiful end-results, we're doing this to continue to develop our grasp of 3D space and form. In this sense, the use of those contour lines in such a situation is very valuable, because it reinforces our mental model of how these surfaces flow through 3D space. So in this case, you'll want to continue doing that as much as is needed. Of course, we don't want to overdo it - a couple contour lines are almost always enough to give a proper visual cue of how a surface sits in space. Furthermore, if there are simple details that can be leveraged as contour lines of their own sort, it's fine to pursue that. Just remember that the priority is not a pretty drawing at the end.

Once your understanding of form is more fully developed through exercises like these, your drawings will suggest form in more subtle ways - specific turns of the silhouette, suggested lines, etc. that you will reflect a strong subconscious grasp of form rather than consciously planned features.

Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Keep what I've said here in mind as you move forwards - especially about avoiding loose suggestive sketching and working within the confines of prior constructional stages.

Uncomfortable

2017-07-20 19:41

Overall you're doing fairly well. There are some issues that stand out to me, but as far as construction goes, you're moving in the right direction.

One of the things that jumped out at me had to do with your branches/stems exercises. You're constructing the lengths of each branch out of line segments, going from one ellipse to the next. This is totally fine, and is mentioned in the lesson. What's important to note however is that you allow the ends of these segments, as they pass their target ellipse, to go off the flow of the overall branch. As a result, the next line you draw does not go directly on top of it, and you get these little loose ends all over. It's important to work on getting them to flow together.

Another thing that I noticed was that the leaves of your plants tend to be a little stiff. The first step of constructing a leaf - that is, establishing the central directional line - is extremely important, as it tells us how that leaf is going to flow through space. The next step is taking this simple line and giving it greater area by enclosing the general bounds of the leaf. Both of these steps rely heavily on simplicity and have nothing to do with specific detail.

The last thing I wanted to mention was about texture. Keep in mind that we're primarily focused on construction, so anything to do with texture and detail is really a minor concern. That said, I'm sure it will be of significance to you as you continue to move forwards. When it comes to texture - when it comes to anything, really, but especially texture - observation is key. What I'm seeing in your application of texture is that you tend to rely more on memory than direct observation. You'll look at your reference image plenty, but you'll spend long periods of time just drawing.

You see a general pattern playing out in your reference image, but what you draw does not actually reflect things that are present in the original object. Instead, you're drawing the patterns that you think are there. It's important to get into the habit of looking at your reference constantly, taking only a moment or two to put down a specific mark before looking back again. I go over this in much greater detail in the texture challenge notes.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, as you're moving in the right direction. I do however want you to take a look at these notes about common pitfalls students tend to face at around this point. They focus primarily on the idea of what it means to draw in 3D space, rather than simply across a 2D page.

Uncomfortable

2017-07-22 21:13

Generally pretty well done, and I see a marked improvement over the course of the set. I do have a few things to suggest however:

• Draw through your forms - specifically more geometric forms, like cylinders and boxes. For the cylinders, be sure to draw them around a minor axis line, to help keep your ellipses aligned. If you're not sure what I mean, take a look at the notes/videos on the 250 cylinder challenge page.

• I'm seeing a whole lot of hatching lines - I'd strongly recommend to avoid their use entirely. They're not inherently bad, but people tend to use them as a stand-in when there's more complex, interesting and specific textural patterns going on. Defaulting to hatching lines will cause you to automatically skip over putting in the extra effort to identify and attempt to replicate what is actually present in your reference image. Hatching lines will also cause a lot of contrast, where you've got areas of light and dark in high concentration in a small space, which can be quite visually distracting. Also, avoid any sort of randomness/chaos. In most of these drawings, you showed a willingness to really sit there and draw out all of the individual little leaf forms, so I think it's fair to say that you learned from the mistakes made here. Scribbling simply never yields good results, because it's very obvious to the viewer that what you drew did not follow any kind of intent or planning.

Aside from that, keep up the good work. Feel free to move onto the next lesson.

Uncomfortable

2017-07-26 01:13

A year is certainly a long time! It's good to see that you haven't gotten rusty in that time, as many do. Your linework still appears to be quite confident. My only concern is that you're a little bit loose at times, and sometimes prone to skip steps. For instance, if you look at the wrinkles on the right most petal of this flower, you'll notice that you jumped right into that complex information, rather than starting with the simplest possible representation of the flow of that petal through 3D space. Similarly, I think it would definitely help to put a little more attention towards how you craft the initial line we use to establish the basic flow of a petal. The earliest steps are always the most important, and it's important to consider how this line flows through all three dimensions of space. When one rushes through this step, it's easy to get caught in the trap of thinking about how lines flow merely on the page itself, which of course is two dimensional.

I'm of course being a little nitpicky here, as most of your work is very well done. The only other thing that I want to mention is that it's important not to leave forms open at any time. An example of this is the flower pot towards the right side of this page. Notice how you leave the bottom of the pot open ended, as just two lines that stop suddenly? Leaving a form open like this immediately flattens it out. It's much better to cap it off with an ellipse, as this will reinforce the volume of the form you're trying to capture.

One last thing - I'd like you to give these notes a quick read, as I think they should be useful. Once you do, feel free to move onto the next lesson.

Uncomfortable

2017-07-29 03:32

Generally quite well done. There's just a couple things I want to point out.

Firstly, looking at your page of leaves, there's two there in the center that are a little fancier than the others (the spiky one and the maple-leaf-like one with several different arms). For the spiky one, make sure you start that out like the rest - with a single simple leaf shape enclosing the entirety of it, before breaking it down into the individual little spikes. For the other, I'd recommend tackling this as several individual simpler leaves, then combining them all into one. You actually started out correctly, with five different lines establishing the flow of each section, though you skipped the step of establishing the enclosing shape for each.

The other issue comes up in flowers like this one. It's about that initial ellipse, and is a fairly minor point in this case, but is going to come into play a little more in the future. Basically, each step of construction sets bounds for what can come after it. This allows us to have these questions effectively answered, so we don't have to worry about them in subsequent steps, and can instead put all of our effort towards figuring out other elements.

That circle you started out with was meant to establish the bounds of your petals. Ideally, your petals would reach out as far as the edge of that circle and no further. This may end up being incorrect (as we all make mistakes), but getting used to working within the bounds of the mistakes we make and rolling with those punches is an important part of this. By ignoring those bounds, we then have to worry about more elements of our drawing in the next step, rather than breaking it up into many manageable chunks.

Admittedly I actually made the same mistake in my demo, which is why you did it here - so it is entirely my fault. I need to fix that demo when I get the chance...

Anyway, those are the two primary issues I noticed in your work. Other than that, you're doing quite well, so I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete.

As for your question: The thing is, when we draw using the ghosting method, and more importantly when it's done correctly (and mind you this does take practice), we don't generally use our eyes to guide our hands when actually putting down a mark. We rely on the muscle memory developed through the preparation/ghosting phase of the process. If you're relying on your eyes, then you're also relying on your conscious brain to course-correct as you go, which results in stiffer linework.

Now, as you get used to this approach to drawing (the ghosting method that is), it's inevitable that you will make mistakes. That's perfectly normal - mistakes are always going to be made, it's a fact of life. So don't hesitate and rely on your eyes, even though you know you'll slip up now and then. Always execute your marks with confidence, trusting in your muscles.

Uncomfortable

2017-07-29 15:56

It's extremely important to submit work from the beginning, and for this reason, so I actually don't allow students to submit a lesson without completing its prerequisites. Each lesson is designed to tackle a certain set of challenges, and if you jump in later on, it becomes considerably more difficult to diagnose more basic, underlying issues. The most effective way for me to teach is for students to start at lesson 1, and then move on once I've marked that lesson as complete, ensuring that they're not bringing earlier mistakes into later work.

So, go ahead and submit lesson 1 and we'll start there.

Uncomfortable

2017-08-02 14:27

Overall I think you're actually doing quite well as far as applying the concepts in the lesson goes. There's certainly room for improvement, but I think that's more of a matter of practice in order to get comfortable with the execution of what you seem to already grasp.

Key points that I'm noticing:

• You're generally constructing things step by step - for example with leaves, you're not skipping through anything, you're taking the time to define the line of flow, building out the simple encompassing shape of the leaf, and then breaking those down into greater detail.

• You're drawing through most of your ellipses

• You're mindful of the primitive forms - for example, constructing out your flower pots as cylinders, rather than focusing too much on the intricacies of those objects too early.

There are a couple of things that caught my eye as far as areas you could tweak your approach:

• Sometimes the curves of a branch are just too long to maintain consistently through their entire length. In this case, I recommend instead setting out your ellipses and drawing an edge that comes down from one ellipse towards the next, overshooting it slightly. Then you'd repeat the process with that second ellipse, drawing down to and past the third, but being sure to keep your lines flowing together. I demonstrate this in the branch exercise instructions (step 3)

• You will need to spend a little more time observing rather than drawing, as there are some basic aspects of the forms you're drawing that you're not quite capturing. For instance, a flower pot has thickness to it. If you draw a cylinder and put some dirt in the middle, that cylinder will read as being paper-thin. Instead, you want to give the top edge a sort of lip, that you achieve by adding an additional ellipse inset into the top of that cylinder. Remember that when it comes to drawing from observation, you want to spend most of your time observing the reference, with momentary breaks in between to draw a couple marks before returning your gaze to the reference to refresh your memory.

Aside from those two points, continued exercise should see some continued improvement. So, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Feel free to move onto the next one.

Uncomfortable

2017-08-02 23:19

Very nice work! You're definitely pushing the principles of construction quite far, and are applying them quite well. As a result, your forms tend to look solid, and the constructions themselves feel tangible and cohesive. Your leaves also flow fairly well through 3D space.

There's only a couple things I wanted to point out. Firstly, I think your flower pots are generally missing an extra inset ellipse under the lip. It's possible that the flower pots you're drawing are shaped strangely, but even if that's the case, extra ellipses are definitely going to be needed to help further define that form, as those bits of the construction don't quite work convincingly.

The other bit I wanted to mention was in regards to the bulb-like plant with the small bumps on it. I can see your progression in how you were trying to tackle the bumps, and you definitely made some improvements compared to the first shot, where you outlined each bump fully as tear-drop shapes. That said, I think it would help a fair bit to add a little extra definition on the underside of each bump, as some added line weight here can effectively mimic a cast-shadow, which helps describe that form to the viewer.

I demonstrated both points in these notes.

Other than that, great work. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next one.

Uncomfortable

2017-08-04 03:34

There's definitely a lot of good here as far as the use of construction goes, though there are some key points I'd like to draw your attention to.

• As demonstrated here, when drawing your branches (and any other situations where you're splitting a longer more difficult line into several segments), it's extremely important that you ensure that those lines flow into one another. If you allow them to visibly break as you are currently, it'll look like very patiently-executed chicken scratching. The flow of your overall line is paramount.

• Draw through all of your ellipses, so you're better able to draw them confidently, which in turn will keep them evenly shaped.

• In your sunflower, you don't appear to be applying the leaf-construction approach, or at least not particularly mindfully. The initial line that is drawn establishes the flow of that petal/leaf, and the next lines enclose a shape around it. That first line should not end up floating arbitrarily in the enclosed shape, but rather that shape should start where the first line starts, and end where the line ends. Because this was not followed, those petals look rather flat.

• This page definitely shows that you're drawing somewhat more from your memory than you should be. Our memories are pretty awful, as a species - the moment we look away from an object, we immediately start simplifying what we remember, which makes it quite difficult to retain enough information to draw it faithfully. As such, we need to keep looking back at our reference, continually refreshing our memory while taking only enough time to draw a couple marks before looking back again. Also, in this drawing your contour curves are not wrapping particularly well around your forms, and the leaves are quite stiff (similarly to what I mentioned in the last point).

• Always remember that everything we construct should be, in your mind first and foremost, a solid 3D form or something made up of smaller 3D forms. In some cases, you definitely try to apply this principle, but in others you skip a few steps and jump into more complex forms before they can really be supported by your construction. Starting simple and continuing to pile on more simple forms is key - something complex is really just a lot of simple things mashed together. Take a look at this.

I'd like you to do the following:

• Half a page of leaves

• Half a page of branches

• Four more pages of plant drawings

Uncomfortable

2017-08-05 20:47

There are a few things that jump out at me:

• You seem to be a little afraid of letting your leaves fold back over themselves, as demonstrated here, especially in your first page. Sometimes that is the natural flow a leaf would take, so don't fight against it. Just follow the flow established with your initial central line, regardless of where that takes you.

• In your branches, you seem to be trying to draw each side with a single continuous line. In the instructions, I mention that it can be more effective to construct those edges as segments, so long as you ensure that those segments flow naturally into one another (so as to avoid a chicken-scratchy look). If you try and nail them in a single line, they will come out wobbly and uneven, and the branch itself will feel much less solid.

• Don't leave forms open ended, as you have at the base of these aloe leaves. The second it is left open, the form becomes completely flatten out. In this case, you'd be much better off establishing how each of those leaves connect to something, so as to reinforce that illusion of form. If you're not sure what they connect to and how, do some additional research to find images from other angles.

• Your linework tends to be somewhat uniformly heavy-handed. For example, look at these. Everything is equally thick, and it tends to make things flatten out. I'm also noticing that your petal construction there doesn't quite follow the methodology covered earlier on in the lesson. Always start out with a single central line, then enclose the shape of the leaf with edges that go from the beginning to the end of that initial flow-line, attempting to follow how that line suggests the leaf would flow through space. I think these are generally a better use of the technique.

There is a fair bit of good here, but overall there's this unshakeable sense of stiffness to your drawings, as though you're putting marks down without fully understanding what they represent about the forms you're drawing, and the space you're drawing them in. I'm also not sure what size you're drawing them at, but if it's fairly small, this can certainly be a contributing factor.

I'd like you to give these notes a read, then try another four pages of plant drawings. When you draw these extra pages, I want you to spend more time observing your references carefully, spending only a few moments at a time looking away from them to draw a few marks before looking back.

Uncomfortable

2017-08-08 13:44

At the end of the day, there's no value in how you feel you should be doing. There's no expectation, no standard of performance, and by expecting more of yourself than you are currently capable, you're only fooling yourself into feeling bad about what you've thus far achieved.

Your leaves section is looking quite solid - I think they demonstrate a nice, fluid flow through 3D space, and it shows that you're following the proper approach to construction for this kind of form. Your branches are also coming along pretty well - one recommendation I have here however is to explore how the branches might move a little in a third dimension as well. Right now they're all very much moving across the two dimensions of the page, but not exploring the depth of the space they occupy.

In the rest of your drawings, there's both good and not-so-good. One thing I'm catching is that you're a little rushed when drawing things, not quite taking the time to execute each stage of construction to the best of your ability. Patience is important, and you need to consider before calling a step "done" whether or not your form is maintaining the illusion of being three dimensional. Keep in mind that we are not drawing flat shapes on a page - we are placing 3D forms in a 3D world, and we need to firmly convince ourselves of this fact at every turn.

Looseness when drawing initial forms will undermine that illusion of solidity - so if you look at how things started out on the left side of this page, there's nothing really holding it together. The right side is similar as well - your starting ellipse was never really tight enough to feel like it could have been a proper ball. The line weight was well applied however, especially in how you took into consideration how each little ball would cast a heavier shadow below it, which you captured by adding a little extra line weight on its lower edge.

The issues in on this page are pretty straight forward - you just need some extra work with cylinders. The solidity I've mentioned a lot in this critique already is somewhat undermined by the subtle arc to the edges of the pot, and while at first it appears as though you drew a continuous minor axis around which to construct the cylindrical form, upon closer inspection we can see that it's actually two separate lines. In regards to the arcs, this kind of additional level of complexity (as I imagine that the pot's edges aren't actually straight) should be built upon the more solid scaffolding of a straight-edged cylinder. Anyway, I do recommend taking a look at the notes over on the 250 cylinder challenge, as there are certainly rules to how cylinders should be constructed.

Additionally, some of the more complex, wavy leaves should still be started out as a dead-simple leaf form, with the waves added after the fact. Remember that this process of construction is about solving problems one-by-one. First you establish the direction in which the leaf will flow (with the center line), then you establish an actual flat shape flowing through 3D space (by enclosing the leaf with simple edges), then you add any additional deviation from this flow (like wavy edges) within the framework already present.

I actually quite like how you've approached this pineapple - you're still being a touch sloppy when it comes to your first lay-ins, but generally it's quite well done. Just remember that we're following the mentality of roughly sketching things in first, then building on top of that. We're building simple, but solid forms, and as such we cannot rush through them. Be sure to draw through all of your ellipses (I've noticed that there are many cases where you don't), and be sure to apply the ghosting method to all of your linework - straights, curves and even ellipses.

Lastly, I think texture is something we should set aside for now. Your observational skills certainly need more development (there's a lot of signs that you're drawing things more from memory, rather than direct observation), but right now it's going to distract you from keeping your focus on the construction and combination of solid forms. When you end up with all of this on your plate at once, it's easy to separate one's mental faculties to attempt to tackle all of them, so removing this one element should help. Later on however, you should definitely give the notes on the texture challenge page a read through.

I'd like you to do another four pages of plant drawings, focusing entirely on construction with no texture whatsoever. Take your time with every form you put down - do not rush, and focus on the idea that at the end of every stage of construction, you should personally feel convinced that what you're drawing is not simply a bunch of lines on a flat page, but rather that the page itself is a window to a three dimensional space, with three dimensional forms sitting within it. I also recommend that before you do these last four pages, you watch the intro video once more. It's perfectly normal for some of this stuff to take a bit of repetition to sink in completely.

There's one last thing I want to point out - in all likelihood, that mentality that you "should be doing better" is probably what is causing you to rush through the early stages. You feel you should be at a point further along than you are currently, and therefore feel you should be able to get those steps down more quickly. As a result, the foundations of your drawings are shakier than they could be. Do not try to move at anyone's pace but your own.

Uncomfortable

2017-08-09 23:21

There are a few things that jump out at me.

To start with, your linework tends to feel rather stiff. This could be caused by a few things, and is most likely a combination. Firstly, drawing from your wrist instead of your shoulder. Secondly, drawing smaller - most of your plant drawings are okay as far as size goes, but your branches do feel rather cramped (often caused by a lack of confidence in what you're doing - students will often draw smaller in a subconscious effort to hide their mistakes, but it generally has the effect of making everything extremely rigid). Lastly, being too preoccupied with the precision and accuracy of your lines, and as a result drawing more slowly, instead of applying the ghosting method as described in lesson 1 (specifically investing all of your time in the preparation phase, and executing with a confident, persistent pace regardless of whether or not you end up missing the mark).

Another issue that comes to mind looking at your leaves is that the space you feel your drawings exist within appears to be limited to the page you're drawing on. That is, the bounds of that space are defined by the page itself. The page only has two dimensions of space, and as a result you are less able to push into that third dimension and explore it with your forms. Your leaves show this as they generally tend to move across those two dimensions, without much exploration into the third. Admittedly leaves aren't particularly long things, so there isn't a whole lot of exploration into the depth of a scene that can be done with them, but all the same this is more of a symptom of your current perception of things.

Take another look at the instructions for the leaf exercise, and focus particularly on the first step. It involves drawing a single line - when drawing it, consider the point from which it starts, and the point at which it ends. Think about where these points are - not on the page, but rather in the three dimensional world to which your page is merely a window. Draw your line such that it flows through these three dimensions, moving not only across, but also from farther away to closer to you.

When constructing these leaves, I want you to take much more time with each individual step - yours definitely seem quite rushed, which is not at all abnormal for one exhibiting frustration, but you need to force yourself to take your time. I do see some interesting leaves where their forms twist around themselves, but I also see a lot of leaves that feel very flat and unlively.

When you do this exercise, for the time being, focus on just those first two steps - establish the line of flow (this line is extremely important), and then by drawing two additional lines from the start to the end of the first, enclose the shape of the leaf. I don't want you to draw any contour lines, any detail. Just focus on how that leaf flows through space. All three of these lines need to be drawn from the shoulder of course, as the focus here is FLOW.

The branches are quite similar in this, in that they start off the same way, and that first step is the most important for the exact same reason. Once that flow is established, draw a few ellipses along that length - draw through them, of course, and also consider how their degree describes the circle they represent in 3D space. I have some notes about that here.

I noticed that instead of drawing your edges from ellipse to ellipse, you seem to have drawn each edge in its entirety in one go. In order to compensate for the inevitable difficulty here, you drastically slowed down, which also resulted in your lines getting quite stiff. If you look at step 3 in the instructions, you'll notice that I mention drawing your edges from one ellipse to and just past the second, overshooting it a little, continuing towards the third. For the next segment, start at the second ellipse and draw towards the third ellipse - flowing directly into the overshoot of your first edges - and repeating the process. If your lines don't flow together, they will look like chicken scratch, but if performed correctly your branches will not be quite as stiff as they are now.

The last point I want to make about the branches is that you're vastly overdoing it with those contour ellipses because you aren't really thinking about the purpose they serve. You're thinking about it as a rule - draw a form, fill it with contour lines, more is always better. This is not the case. They serve a purpose, and if you have lines that are not serving a purpose (because their purpose is already being served by another such mark), then they serve only as clutter, and tend to stiffen things up. Aside from the usual purpose of contour lines, to reinforce the illusion that a form is three dimensional and has volume to it, these ellipses serve as the junctions as we draw our longer edges, segment by segment. Keep that in mind when deciding how many ellipses you want to put along a length of branch, and don't use more than you need.

Oh, one other thing - keep it simple. Until you're able to capture these branches with the illusion that they flow smoothly through all three dimensions of space, I don't want you to play with having forking branches or anything complex like that.

I think that should be more than enough for now - I'd like you to do three pages of the leaf exercise, followed by three pages of the branches exercise. When you resubmit, link me back to your initial submission and we'll decide what the next step will be from there.

Oh yeah - apply the ghosting method to everything. Every mark you draw should be done so confidently, and from the shoulder. Do not allow yourself to rush, or to stiffen up. You WILL make mistakes. You must make mistakes. Accept that as a fact of life.

Uncomfortable

2017-08-11 20:12

Honestly, this is better than I would have expected. You've got some good things going on in here, but there are still plenty of issues I can bring to your attention. Here are some notes pointing out specific issues. Additionally, I noticed that you've got a lot of places where you're scribbling details down - don't do this. If you're not going to take your time drawing things carefully from observation, you sure as hell shouldn't be adding them at all. They're only distracting you from focusing on construction, and make your presentation look much worse.

One of the things I pointed out in regards to your branches was that your edges don't flow too well into one another. We construct those branches in segments because it allows us to maintain more control over those sections, but it also comes with the risk that if those segments don't flow into one another, it will look very stiff and chickenscratchy.

When we draw those segments, we start at one ellipse, overshoot the next ellipse and steer towards the third. This last part - steering towards the third - is important, because this ensures that when we draw the next segment, it will go over the path of the first, avoiding the disjointedness we see now.

While there are risks involved in this approach, you should definitely use it instead of trying to draw an entire complex branch form in a single curve. You simply don't have the control right now to be able to achieve anything like that, and learning to understand how your lines flow through this approach will help you work towards that eventually.

On another note, aside from the incredibly sloppy ground/dirt, this mushroom is very well done as far as the construction and form goes.

I'd like you to do another four pages of plant drawings, focusing entirely on construction. No detail or texture whatsoever, just solid forms. Focus on capturing their solidity, and DO NOT SKIP STEPS. It doesn't matter if a drawing requires you to capture one leaf or a hundred, you need to draw everything with the same amount of care and patience.

Uncomfortable

2017-08-18 20:14

Generally pretty well done. Your constructions make good consideration of how each object is broken down into simpler elements, and your leaves flow well through space in a way that shows your growing understanding of how they exist in all three dimensions, rather than just the two of the page itself. The one issue I have however is with your general line quality. There's a pervasive sort of "sketchiness" to how you're approaching things here, which suggests to me that you're not taking as much time as you should be to apply the ghosting method. In general, each line should consist of only one well planned and confidently executed mark.

There is an exception from this rule, but it is not without its risks - and that is the approach we use to draw longer branches with successive segments. The risk here is the reason we want to use a single line in all other areas - things can very easily get 'hairy', and this drastically reduces not only the resulting quality of the drawing, but also damages the illusion of solidity of our forms.

So when drawing these branches with individual segments, we always work to ensure that the segments flow together as smoothly as possible. In yours, I see a tendency to draw from one ellipse, and overshoot the second somewhat. This is good, as it is part of the instructions, but when overshooting the second ellipse, you must steer that line towards the third, such that when you start your next line segment, it should fall directly (or as close to directly as you can) on top of the previous line, making them flow together, as though they were all part of a single stroke.

Another thing that causes students to draw rather hairy linework is a bad habit of reinforcing lines they've drawn with additional strokes. This should be avoided at all costs.

Lastly, remember that any cylindrical forms should be drawn following the steps one would use to draw a cylinder. For example, this flower pot should have been constructed around a minor axis, to keep the ellipses lined up correctly. Additionally, try not to let things get cut off the page, and if they do, cap them off. If you have two lines running parallel and suddenly stopping freely in the middle of the page (like this one), that drastically flattens out your form. It's better to cap them off with an ellipse, as though the cylinder itself ended there, to reinforce the illusion that it is a three dimensional form.

I'd like you to do one more page of the branch exercise, taking care to keep your lines flowing smoothly together (and avoiding any additional lines that are not necessary).

Uncomfortable

2017-08-20 00:07

Pretty well done. Overall you're demonstrating a well developing understanding of 3D space, and how your objects exist inside of it. There are a few things that I'd like to mention however.

Firstly, the flow of your leaves has a tendency to be a little stiff. In many of these cases, they tend to extend along the two dimensions of the page, rather than through the third dimension, making me believe that you are still somewhat trapped within the limited space of the page. Keep in mind that the paper you're drawing on is more of a window into a larger three dimensional space. The top left of these notes should help explain that a little further.

Secondly, while your branches are coming along well, you are going to have to work on getting the individual segments along each edge to flow better together. Remember that the subsequent segment needs to run right over the previous one in order for them to feel as though they are all one continuous line.

Thirdly, I noticed that in some of your leaves, you set out your initial simple leaf form, but then when breaking it down into more complex detail, you sometimes ignore the underlying construction altogether. You need to have your later passes build upon your earlier ones, rather than ignoring them. Here's what I mean.

Lastly, overall you need to work towards executing your marks a little more confidently. Right now your linework has the slightest sense of stiffness to it, which suggests that you hesitate while actually drawing your linework. Accept that mistakes will happen, and once you've put the time into the preparation phase, execute with confidence every time.

Anyway, I'm going to go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Keep these points in mind, and feel free to move onto the next lesson.

Uncomfortable

2017-08-21 04:34

Nicely done! There's definitely improvement over the set, and the cactus at the end is really well executed. It demonstrates a really solid grasp of the forms themselves and how they relate to one another. In general, your leaves flow fairly nicely (and also improve over the set).

The only issue I noticed that didn't seem to resolve itself through the course of the homework was with your branches (mostly because there weren't many opportunities to demonstrate improvement on that front). Basically, the issue is that you've got to ensure that the segments with which you construct the edges of your branch form flow together smoothly. It's very easy to lose track of this and end up with a lot of notably broken flow. The trick to avoiding this is ensuring that when you draw from one ellipse and overshoot the next, that you aim for the third. Then for the next line segment you draw, it must overlap the previous one. If you allow for the flow to break as you have, it will appear chicken scratchy, which is generally the big risk with this approach.

Anyway, overall you're doing great, so I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Just be more mindful of that sense of flow for your lines. Keep up the good work and feel free to move onto the next lesson.

Uncomfortable

2017-08-26 21:04

The flow of your leaves is generally okay. There's still plenty of room for improvement on that aspect, and in general, but you're moving in the right direction. There are a few things that I'd like to point out though, in regards to your work.

Before that, give these notes a read. They go over things relating to the flow of flat shapes through space (like what you're struggling with a little in regards to the leaves), as well as other general points that come up for many students around this point.

The first thing I want to mention is related to this page. When drawing this form, you started out with two large spheres, which is more or less how I'd tackle it. Where things went a little wrong however can be seen if you look at how the final line of the fruit seems to fall within the larger sphere on the left side, rather than following along it. In essence, you ignored this aspect of the original construction in order to better suit how you thought the fruit should look. It's a common enough issue.

It's extremely important that when applying the constructional method, you understand that each phase of construction solves certain problems, and answers certain questions. For example, that initial sphere established the width and volume of the base of the fruit. We want to answer these questions one by one, rather than all at once, as this allows us to narrow our focus to the other problems that lay before us. Once handled, that question has been answered. That problem has been solved. We can move onto other ones.

But if we decide at a later point to undermine an answer to a previous question - one that had already been dealt with - we start to clutter ourselves with far too many questions at once, and the construction starts to fall apart. Frequently we end up trying to change parts of that answer, rather than the whole thing, and things stop making quite as much sense.

This generally results in a construction that no longer feels solid. So, even if your previous answer ended up not being entirely correct, work within it all the same. Keep in mind that these drawings are all exercises not to teach us how to reproduce the image we're referring to, but rather to understand how to construct objects such that they feel solid and three dimensional. Our goal is not to be 100% accurate, but rather for our result to be convincing and tangible.

Another point this page raises is the matter of line weight. Line weight is not meant to be applied to the entirety of a line, through its entire length. Nor is it intended to be drawn slowly and carefully, trying desperately to match the complex twists and turns of such a single line. This will always result in such a line looking stiff and wobbly, rather than smooth and confident.

Instead, line weight should be applied to key areas along the length of a line, usually to emphasize or clarify which line overlaps the other. If you think of a T junction, if all lines were of equal width, you could argue that a what is being depicted could be the intersection of two straight lines, or a more awkward L line flowing over another shorter segment. By adding a little line weight to one such continuous line as it flows through this junction, you can clarify how they flow. I discuss line weight further in these notes.

While we're on that topic, I noticed in many cases that you were outlining the silhouette of the whole object in many cases (like this example). As discussed previously, you want line weight to tell us how a single line flows and separate it out from many others. Where the stem of that plant branched out, you had the line weight follow along the new branch, rather than stopping or flowing along its original line. This ends up being quite confusing to the viewer.

This goes along with not applying additional weight to the entirety of a line. Don't uniformly outline the entirety of an object, or even a single form. Line weight is all about organizing the lines that exist in your drawing, and giving subtle little touches that help communicate how those lines navigate tricky intersections.

On that page, there is something I'd like to discuss about your leaves. If you look to the top left leaf of that plant, you'll see that your initial shape has a visible wave in it. This complexity shows that you're blending steps together, or skipping through them. The first step is, of course, to establish the flow of the leaf with a single line. The second however is not to capture the leaf in any direct detail, but rather to enclose the space that leaf will occupy, as simply as possible, again focusing on how that flat shape flows through space. If you factor in waves or ripples in the leaf, you'll end up tackling too many challenges all at once. All you need to worry about is the general flow. You did this pretty well in your actual leafs exercise.

I think that should be enough for now. I'd like you to do another four pages of plant constructions. Avoid any detail or texture, just focus on establishing strong underlying forms, and going through each individual phase of construction.