Hello Edravi5340, I'll be the teaching assistant handling your lesson 5 critique.

Starting with your organic intersections, you’re doing well. You’re keeping your forms simple which helps them to feel solid. You’re doing a pretty good job of thinking about how gravity will affect your forms, and allowing them to come to rest in a position where they feel stable and supported. Your second page is stronger in this regard, as the form at the top left of the first page feels a little bit precariously balanced, like it might roll off the pile at any moment.

I’d like you to take a look at this diagram which shows how to draw a form slumping over the form below, instead of drawing the forms cutting through one another.

Your shadows are bold enough to project onto the surfaces below, and they’re following a consistent light source which helps the pile feel cohesive and believable. Try to think a bit more about how the curvature of the surface that the shadow is being cast onto will affect the shape of the shadow.

You could also get a bit more out of this exercise by being more experimental with where you place the light source for any given pile, as I noticed both your pages appear to be lit from almost directly above.

Moving on to your animal constructions, I'm happy to see that you're giving your constructions plenty of room on the page, and that the majority of your linework is fairly confident and purposeful. It looks like you're working on the smoothness of your lines, but remember they should also be unbroken, as introduced in the first principle of markmaking. I noticed some places where your linework gets broken into a series of disconnected marks, for example the tail of this squirrel. we can see something similar on the neck of this fox, remember when adding texture it should attach to a constructed surface. Having stray marks floating on their own will undermine the 3D illusion and remind the viewer that they're looking at a flat piece of paper.

Another way we can accidentally undermine the 3D illusion is by attempting to alter the silhouette of a form we have already drawn, which I talked about quite a bit in your previous critique. while you usually respect the solidity of your forms by resisting the temptation to cut back inside a form once it is on the page, you do quite often extend the silhouette of forms you have already drawn by adding flat partial shapes, and I've marked a few examples of this in blue on your hybrid. To convince the viewer, and more importantly, yourself that the construction is 3D, you need to provide information to explain how the new addition attached to the existing forms in 3D space, and giving each addition its own, complete, fully enclosed silhouette will help towards that goal. Please reread your lesson 4 critique for an explanation on how to take actions on your constructions in 3D and several diagrams and demos to show you how to do so. I do see places where you are adding in 3D quite well, as I noted on your hybrid, the additional mass is pretty good, we just want you to be using this strategy consistently when you want to build on your constructions.

Another point that was discussed in your lesson 4 critique was the merits of the sausage method of leg construction, and a request to use this method throughout lesson 5. It seems this section of feedback was forgotten, as it looks like you're using a wide variety of strategies for constructing your legs. Here I've rebuilt one of your legs using the sausage method. You can also see this method being used in the donkey, rat, and puma demos on the informal demos page.

Moving down to feet, it helps to introduce structure to the foot by using "boxy forms" that is, implying the division between planes by design of the silhouette of the form, without having to explicitly draw all of these edges. It sou ds more difficult than it is, you can see visual example with these notes on foot construction. Notice how we can take the approach a step further, by using a complete form to construct each toe, rather than switching to working in 2D by drawing toes with single lines, or attempting to add too much complexity in a single step and having the result fall flat.

Most of your core construction looks solid, although we usually only simplify the torso into a single ellipse when constructing birds. For quadrupeds it usually works better to construct a separate ribcage and pelvis and combine them into a "torso sausage." when you do construct the torso sausage you often draw the ribcage too short, for example with the axolotl at the top of this page. Remember that the ribcage should occupy roughly half the length of the torso, as discussed here on the lesson intro page. The other axolotl on the same page has a torso built from a flat partial shape. it can be tricky to construct the torso sausage from the front, but you can see a good example of how to do it in the puma construction on the informal demos page.

It is good to see that you have explored using additional masses to build onto many of your constructions, and that you are designing the in a way that shows that you are thinking about how the various forms in your constructions exist in 3D space. One thing that helps with the shape here is to think about how the mass would behave when existing first in the void of empty space, on its own. It all comes down to the silhouette of the mass - here, with nothing else to touch it, our mass would exist like a soft ball of meat or clay, made up only of outward curves. A simple circle for a silhouette.

Then, as it presses against an existing structure, the silhouette starts to get more complex. It forms inward curves wherever it makes contact, responding directly to the forms that are present. The silhouette is never random, of course - always changing in response to clear, defined structure. You can see this demonstrated in this diagram.

So, with that in mind, I have made some notes on your goat where I thought your additional masses could be improved. On this image I have made some edits with notes explaining why the changes were made. Instead of running the mass over a long distance and introducing unexplained complexity, I've broken it into two separate masses, which stay simpler where they are exposed to fresh air, and have been pressed against the top of the shoulder and thigh masses to help anchor them to the construction.The more interlocked they are, the more spatial relationships we define between the masses, the more solid and grounded everything appears.

Oh, and I know you only did this with one page but I want to stress that you should not be using pencil or any kind of light underdrawing as seen on this camel. This goes against the recommended tools as discussed here and sticking to ink is a hard requirement for submitting for official critique as specified here. By erasing some of your pencil underdrawing I cannot see what constructional steps you took to arrive at your final ink lines, so there is little I can do in terms of providing meaningful feedback on this one.

The last thing I wanted to talk about is head construction. Lesson 5 has a lot of different strategies for constructing heads, between the various demos. Given how the course has developed, and how Uncomfortable is finding new, more effective ways for students to tackle certain problems. So not all the approaches shown are equal, but they do have their uses. As it stands, as explained at the top of the tiger demo page (here), the current approach that is the most generally useful, as well as the most meaningful in terms of these drawings all being exercises in spatial reasoning, is what you'll find here in this informal head demo.

There are a few key points to this approach:

• The specific shape of the eye sockets - the specific pentagonal shape allows for a nice wedge in which the muzzle can fit in between the sockets, as well as a flat edge across which we can lay the forehead area.

• This approach focuses heavily on everything fitting together - no arbitrary gaps or floating elements. This allows us to ensure all of the different pieces feel grounded against one another, like a three dimensional puzzle.

• We have to be mindful of how the marks we make are cuts along the curving surface of the cranial ball - working in individual strokes like this (rather than, say, drawing the eye socket with an ellipse) helps a lot in reinforcing this idea of engaging with a 3D structure.

Try your best to employ this method when doing constructional drawing exercises using animals in the future, as closely as you can. Sometimes it seems like it's not a good fit for certain heads, but as shown in in this rhino head demo it can be adapted for a wide array of animals.

All right, I think that should cover it. As there are a number of areas where I would like you to demonstrate your understanding, I will be assigning some revisions. If anything said to you here, or in your previous critique, is unclear or confusing you are allowed to ask questions.

please complete 4 pages of animal constructions.