Sometimes I design these exercises expecting errors to be made - which is good because we learn best from errors. In this case I know that if the wood is not drawn dark enough, you'll be forced to draw the leaves with a very restricted palette - and I think that's partly happened here. You did darken the base of the planks, and they contsin dark values, but they also have a lot light content that's restricting thew value range for your leaves.

The holes in the wood are excellent, and read as deep dark holes because they are both blak and solid. If you leave any light areas in areas of dark shade the eye reads them as "features". It tries to make sense of them and believes the area is just behind the wood, instead of it being a deep dark hole. The aim should aleways be to get a solid black with no light areas - which you've achieved.

The wood looks good and your choice of dark tones at the base means you had a greater range of tones available to you for the leaves in that area. In this case the white areas left in the dark wood dilute the intensity of your bright highlights in the grass. Take an HB or 2H and shade lightly and completely over the wood. You won't affect the detail, and the harder grades won't affect the darker contrasts, but they will remove any white. Then you can reserve white for true highlights and, as they are now the only white in the drawing, they will shine brilliantly.

The edges of your leaves should be sharp - which they are. If they are at all woolly or blurred, they won't look realistic and or stand forward of the wall.

You have made an error with the cast shadows. I'm pleased to see you incorporated them, but they are far from accurate. OK, accuracy doesn't matter, just the signal you're sending - but the more natiral it is, the better.

So, whenever a leaf curls away from the wall, it casts its shadow further away from itself. You can see from my arrows that ALL your shadfows are exactly the same - but the leaves are at diffeent distances from, themselves and the wall.

In my illustration: Leaf #1 has your shadow of the top leaf, where the two leaves are quite close to each other. Leaf #2 is BEHIND Leaf #1, so the shadow has further to travel. And #3 is the shadow cast by the front leaf on the wood. That has even further to travel, so it will be even lower.

In general use, you don't need to include every shadow but those you do include should be used to increase the sense of depth and three-dimensionality. We're back to those visual clues again, and cast shadows are excellent devices to use.


Rushed? It's lacking clarity at the left-hand end, but otherwise it's looking good. It has a very believable rounded and full curve, although I feel you could have increased the solidity of your cast shadow with good effect. But it has good contrast, and the more you can get into a drawing, the more you emphasise the three-dimensional form. And you have many more values at your disposal too.

The aim should be to create a really sharp bottom edge to the feather so the shadow will give a clear visual separation. Yours is sharp, and very nicely detailed, at the right-hand end, but it's too soft at the left and all that work is rather lost in the patchy shadow. Personally, I would have first established the lower edge of the feather, using a sharp dark HB line, that extended up into the splits between the filaments (if I chose to include any) and describes every detail of the edge. Now that dark line can be extend downwards to create the shadow. And using the darkest tone between the splits in the filaments will lift the feather further up from the base, or at least make it more visually obvious.

The more you can divide up a drawing the simpler it becomes and the more you can concentrate on each element. This feather gives you a ideal opportunity - beginning with the lower edge of the feather. All I'd have to think above while constructing that line would be that edge. Where filaments lined up exactly, where they parted a little, where an undulation in the surface curved the edge, where the filaments parted to produce splits... Next, the shadow, extending down from the line I'd just established. And when drawing the lower half of the feather, you already know where every filament ends as you start to draw it.

In the feather itself, you've created some really nice, subtle three-dimensional shaping, and the suggestion of the filaments is just about perfect - present but not dominant.

You could have omitted the feathery bits :o) But I'm glad you had a go at them. This is one area where detail just never works. In fact "vague" is what the eye sees and expects, so any attempt at detail simply reads false. Yours are nicely feathery and work very well.

A really good attempt that just needs a more solid cast shadow and a much sharper and more clearly defined left-hand end.

Finally, three videos for you that I meant to post with your Barn Wall drawing:
DIVIDE AND CONQUER
DIVIDE LINE AND TONE
And the BARN WALL:
DIVIDE AND CONTROL