Hello HuynhMinhChi, I'll be the teaching assistant handling your lesson 4 critique.

"I admit that I drew more than what was assigned to me because it was so much fun and I really enjoyed the slow process."

As well meaning as this is, what you're doing is something we refer to as "grinding." As discussed in this video from lesson 0 (which I've time-stamped for you) your job as a student is simply follow the instructions as closely as you can and to complete the assigned number of pages to the best of your current ability. While you may be having fun completing extra pages, you may be also repeating mistakes without realising, or focusing your attention on aspects of the drawing or perceived problems that aren't actually important. So, completing extra pages prior to receiving feedback is a waste of your time. Keep in mind that once a lesson is marked as complete, the exercises are yours to keep, and you can continue to practice these constructions as you move forward.

Question 1:

The most comprehensive and up to date instruction for texture in this course is what you'll find in the texture section of lesson 2. These concepts are the same whether you're applying texture to the shell of a beetle, or a knitted sweater. Making sure you're using reference images that are high resolution, and working from a screen that is larger than a phone, should certainly help to make your references easier to observe.

Question 2:

Uncomfortable is focused on updating the current 7 lessons, and I don't think he has any plans to reinstate the ones that were removed. If you're interested in the other lessons, he has left up this lecture on composition and this associated PDF as they still have a lot to offer, but it is not something you'll be able to submit homework for.

The changes that will be made as the lessons are updated will be fairly minor, focusing primarily on how information is conveyed - and generally what we know of those adjustments are shared in the critiques you receive.

Organic Forms

You're doing a pretty good job of sticking to the characteristics of simple sausages that are introduced here. There is a tendency for some of your forms to swell through their midsection and become bloated, particularly the shorter ones. Try to keep the width of the forms even along their length.

Keep in mind that the degree of your contour lines should be shifting wider as we slide along the sausage form, moving farther away from the viewer. This is also influenced by the way in which the sausages themselves turn in space, but farther = wider is a good rule of thumb to follow. If you're unsure as to why that is, review the Lesson 1 ellipses video. You can also see a good example of how to vary your contour curves in this diagram showing the different ways in which our contour lines can change the way in which the sausage is perceived.

Insect Constructions

I'm honestly really happy with what I'm seeing here. You're often building things up through the addition of new forms, and defining the relationships between your forms with contour lines. The construction at the bottom of this page for example, is coming across as very solid and three dimensional.

There are a couple of pieces of advice I can give you to help you to maintain that 3D illusion, but overall you’re doing well.

First off, whenever you're engaging with these constructional exercises be sure to start with forms that are dead simple for the head/thorax/abdomen. I noticed on this beetle you started off with something rather more complicated for the head. The more complex a form is, the more difficult it is for the viewer (and you) to understand how it is supposed to sit in 3D space, so it is important to start off simple and gradually add complexity in successive passes as discussed in this section where we introduce constructional drawing. At no point do we want to add more complexity than can be supported by the existing structures, but we gradually build things up piece by piece, starting with the larger elements and working our way down to the smaller forms. You generally stick to this concept really well though there are a few places where you'd attempted to add a great deal of complexity with a single form, such as the "antlers" of the stag beetle on the bottom of page 5. You can see an example of how to build up this sort of structure more methodically in this beetle horn demo.

The second point I wanted to make concerns how we go about adding complexity, once our big simple forms are in place.

Because we're drawing on a flat piece of paper, we have a lot of freedom to make whatever marks we choose, but many of those marks would contradict the illusion you're trying to create and remind the viewer that they're just looking at a series of lines on a flat piece of paper. In order to avoid this and stick only to the marks that reinforce the illusion we're creating, we can force ourselves to adhere to certain rules as we build up our constructions. Rules that respect the solidity of our construction.

For example - once you've put a form down on the page, do not attempt to alter its silhouette. Its silhouette is just a shape on the page which represents the form we're drawing, but its connection to that form is entirely based on its current shape. If you change that shape, you won't alter the form it represents - you'll just break the connection, leaving yourself with a flat shape. We can see this most easily in this example of what happens when we cut back into the silhouette of a form.

For example, I've marked on your beetle in red where it looks like you cut back inside the silhouette of forms you had already drawn. One thing I did notice is that many of the instances of cutting into forms across your set (though not all) came down to the fact that your ellipses would come out a little loose (which is totally normal), and then you'd pick one of the inner edges to serve as the silhouette of the ball form you were constructing. This unfortunately would leave some stray marks outside of its silhouette, which does create some visual issues. Generally it is best to treat the outermost perimeter of the ellipse as the edge of the silhouette, so everything else remains contained within it. This diagram shows which lines to use on a loose ellipse.

Instead, when we want to build on our construction or alter something we add new 3D forms to the existing structure. Forms with their own complete silhouettes - and by establishing how those forms either connect or relate to what's already present in our 3D scene. We can do this either by defining the intersection between them with contour lines (like in lesson 2's form intersections exercise), or by wrapping the silhouette of the new form around the existing structure as shown here.

This is all part of understanding that everything we draw is 3D, and therefore needs to be treated as such in order for both you and the viewer to believe in that lie.

You can see this in practice in this ant head demo. You can also see some good examples of this in the lobster and shrimp demos on the informal demos page. As Uncomfortable has been pushing this concept more recently, it hasn't been fully integrated into the lesson material yet (it will be when the overhaul reaches Lesson 4). Until then, those submitting for official critiques basically get a preview of what is to come.

We can also flatten out the construction by extending off existing forms with partial shapes, not quite providing enough information for us to understand how it is supposed to connect to the existing structure in 3D space. I've marked an example of this in blue on your crab. On the same image I've called out an area where your line work got a bit loose and sketchy. In ending up with all of these different lines representing the edges of the same form, the viewer is given a number of different possible interpretations. Regardless of which interpretation they choose to follow, there will always be another present there to contradict it, which ultimately undermines their suspension of disbelief and reminds them that they're looking at a flat, two dimensional drawing. Furthermore the ghosting method emphasises the importance of making one mark only. Practice the motion as many times as you need, then execute the line once.

Something else that can undermine the solidity of your constructions is using additional line weight as a tool to manipulate the silhouette of your forms, as seen on this scorpion claw. Line weight is a tool, and given the bounds and limitations of this course we use it specifically for clarifying the overlaps between forms and restricting it to localised areas where those overlaps occur. I'd like you to watch this video which explains how to use line weight in this course. It was added after you completed lesson 1, so you may not have seen it yet.

The next thing I wanted to talk about is leg construction. It is good to see that you've used the sausage method for the majority of your constructions and are applying it well. It’s not uncommon for students to be aware of the sausage method as introduced here, but to decide that the legs they're looking at don't actually seem to look like a chain of sausages, so they use some other strategy.

The key to keep in mind here is that the sausage method is not about capturing the legs precisely as they are - it is about laying in a base structure or armature that captures both the solidity and the gestural flow of a limb in equal measure, where the majority of other techniques lean too far to one side, either looking solid and stiff or gestural but flat. Once in place, we can then build on top of this base structure with more additional forms.

I can see that you've jumped right in with using additional forms to build onto your sausage armatures. There are some strategies for this that work better than others. While it seems obvious to take a bigger form and use it to envelop a section of the existing structure, (as you were doing on the legs of the crab construction), it actually works better to break it into smaller pieces that can each have their own individual relationship with the underlying sausages defined, as shown here. The key is not to engulf an entire form all the way around - always provide somewhere that the form's silhouette is making contact with the structure, so you can define how that contact is made.

You can see some further examples of how to build onto your constructions) here, in this ant leg demo, and also here on this dog leg demo as this method should be used throughout lesson 5 too.

All right, I think that should cover it. You've done a good job and I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Please keep the points discussed here in mind as you tackle the next lesson, they will continue to be relevant to animal constructions.