DIO

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

Starting with your organic forms you’re doing pretty well at sticking to the characteristics of simple sausages that are introduced here.

Your contour curves are fairly smooth and even, though there are a couple of curves that look like they may have benefited from a little more patience and care being given to their alignment. You show that you definitely understand that we’re aiming to have each curve cut into two symmetrical halves by the central flow line, just be sure to take as much time as you need with the preparation phase of the ghosting method, and remember you can (and should) rotate your page to the angle that is optimal for each contour line.

In terms of the degree of your contour lines, this isn't quite right (you appear to be drawing them to either be consistent in degree, or decreasing in degree the further back along the sausage we slide). Keep in mind that barring any actual bending of the form, a sausage is essentially a cylinder which follows the same logic explained here in the ellipses section of lesson 1. This means that the degree of the contour curves 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. You can 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.

Moving on to your insect constructions overall you've done very well, it looks like you’re being intentional and methodical in your approach, starting with simple solid forms and building your constructions up piece by piece. I particularly liked some of the abdomen segmentation on your various pages, it feels bulbous and voluminous as it follows the curvature of the underling form in 3D space.

The biggest point I want to bring to your attention is additional information that'll continue to help you make the most out of these exercises as you continue forwards - rather than an actual mistake or thing you did incorrectly given the information you had. This main point is about differentiating between the actions we can take when interacting with a construction, which fall into two groups:

• Actions in 2D space, where we're just putting lines down on a page, without necessarily considering the specific nature of the relationships between the forms they're meant to represent and the forms that already exist in the scene.

• Actions in 3D space, where we're actually thinking about how each form we draw exists in 3D space, and how it relates to the existing 3D structures already present. We draw them in a manner that actually respects the 3D nature of what's already there, and even reinforces it.

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 this beetle in red some areas where it looks like you cut back inside the silhouette of forms you had already drawn. One thing I did notice looking through your various constructions is that many of the instances of cutting into forms (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.

While cutting back into a silhouette is the easiest way to depict the issues with modifying a form after it's been drawn, there are other ways in which we can fall into this trap. On this section I also marked in blue some places where you'd extended off existing forms using partial, flat shapes, not quite providing enough information for us to understand how they actually connect to the existing structure in 3D space. While this approach worked for adding edge detail to leaves in the previous lesson, this is because leaves are paper-thin structures, so essentially they are already flat and altering their silhouette won’t flatten them further. When we want to build on forms that aren’t already flat we need to use another strategy.

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 beetle horn demo, as well as 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.

The next thing I wanted to call out is simply that I noticed a tendency to draw your earlier constructional marks a little more faintly, especially when blocking in the head/thorax/abdomen. Be sure to make every mark with the same confidence - drawing earlier parts more faintly can undermine how willing we are to regard them as solid forms that are present in the 3D world, and it can also encourage us to redraw more, and trace more over this existing linework later on, rather than letting them stand for themselves.

The next thing I wanted to talk about is leg construction. It looks like you were working with the sausage method in mind for most of your pages, which is a good start, and you’re clearly able to draw these sausage forms successfully when you choose to. The sausage method is quite specific, and to use it correctly you’ll need to draw each sausage in its entirety, instead of cutting some of them off where they overlap. Once the sausages are in place we add one contour line to each joint which shows how the forms penetrate one another in 3D space, much like the contour lines introduced in the form intersections exercise.

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 as shown in these examples here, and here. This tactic can be used extensively to develop the specific complexity of each particular leg, as shown in this example of an ant leg. I’ll also show how this can be applied to animals in this dog leg demo as we would like you to stick with the sausage method as closely as you can throughout lesson 5.

Wrapping this up with a look at your approach to texture and detail, for the most part this is coming along very well, with strong observation skills and a developing understanding of using cast shadows to imply textural forms, without outlining the forms themselves.

Observation is only part of the puzzle though, the application of texture requires us to understand the forms that are actually present, rather than simply copying and filling in things that look dark in the reference. As far as I can tell, it looks like this is what happened along the legs of the mosquito with the black and white banding likely to be markings on the insect (changes in local colour) rather than anything to do with physical texture.

What we're doing in this course can be broken into two distinct sections - construction and texture - and they both focus on the same concept. With construction we're communicating to the viewer what they need to know to understand how they might manipulate this object with their hands, were it in front of them. With texture, we're communicating to the viewer what they need to know to understand what it'd feel like to run their fingers over the object's various surfaces. Both of these focus on communicating three dimensional information. When thinking about how to add texture, it may help you if you imagine the subject has been painted solid grey or white. If for example we think of a zebra, the physical texture of the fur will feel the same, whether we happen to be running our fingers over a black stripe, or a white one.

If you’re unsure how to approach texture in this course these reminders are a good section to refer to, they provide the instructions that are the most recently updated, and the most useful in terms of these constructions all being exercises to develop spatial reasoning skills.

All right, I think that should cover it. Your constructions are coming along well and I’ll be marking this lesson as complete. Please make sure you refer to this critique and apply the points discussed here to your animal constructions in the next lesson, where they will continue to be relevant.

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

Starting with your organic intersections these are working well. Your forms have a strong sense of volume, and you’re clearly thinking about how they have weight, allowing gravity to pull them down into positions where they feel stable and supported.

Your shadows are bold enough to cast onto the surfaces below and are helping to clarify the relationships between the forms. When designing the shape of your shadows keep in mind that this shape is the silhouette of the form casting the shadow, projected away from a single light source (which should be consistent for a whole pile) onto the surfaces of other forms and/or the ground plane. For the most part this is clearly what you have in mind, but I noticed a couple of places such as this section where the small form seems to be casting a shadow to the left and right simultaneously, suggesting that the light source is moving around.

Moving on to your animal constructions, in general your work is very well done. I can see that you’re treating your constructions like 3D puzzles, breaking the subject down into simple forms and rebuilding it on your page, piece by piece. You’ve clearly demonstrated a solid understanding of the lesson, though I do have a few pieces of advice that I think will help you when practising these constructional exercises in future.

Firstly, how we make use of the space on the page makes a big difference. The two most important things you need to give each drawing throughout this course are space and time. I noticed a few pages such as the hippos and caracals where there was one small construction surrounded by tons of blank empty space, which makes your job more difficult than it really needs to be. Try to give your constructions as much room as they really need, as this gives you more space to think through the spatial reasoning puzzles involved with these exercises, as well as making it easier to engage your whole arm and draw from the shoulder. The best approach to use here is to ensure that the first drawing on a given page is given as much room as it requires. Only when that drawing is done should we assess whether there is enough room for another. If there is, we should certainly add it, and reassess once again. If there isn't, it's perfectly okay to have just one drawing on a given page as long as it is making full use of the space available to it.

For the most part you’re making effective use of the additive 3D construction discussed in your lesson 4 feedback, though I did notice a few places here and there where there where you’d altered the silhouette of an existing form, taking an action that can only really be understood in the flat 2D space of the piece of paper. We can see an example of this on the head of this giraffe where you’d established a solid form for the muzzle, but then cut back inside its silhouette when describing the nose and mouth. We can see this happening on a smaller scale in a few places along the legs, marked with blue for extensions and red for cuts.

When engaging with organic constructions in future please endeavour to only take actions by adding in 3D, as shown in the lower right of this breakdown of the various types of actions we can take when building a construction. Creating believable, solid, three dimensional constructions despite drawing on a flat page requires us to first and foremost convince ourselves of this illusion, this lie we're telling, as discussed here back in Lesson 2. The more our approach reinforces the illusion, the more we make new marks that reinforce it even further. The more our marks break the illusion, the more marks we make that then further break the illusion, for us and for everyone else.

While in this course we're doing everything very explicitly, it's to create such a solid belief and understanding of how the things we draw exist in 3D space, that when we draw them more loosely with sketching and other less explicit approaches, we can still produce marks that fall in line with the idea that this thing we're drawing exists in 3D.

It looks like sometimes the silhouettes of your forms are altered accidentally, when tracing over them with a pass of additional lineweight. It looks like sometimes you’re trying to use lineweight to improve the aesthetic presentation of your constructions, which is not really following the instructions in this video from lesson 1 which I directed you to in your lesson 4 critique. If something about that video or my previous explanation is unclear or confusing you are allowed to ask questions and we will try explaining it in another way that helps you to understand.

In lesson 5 we introduce a very effective tool for students to use to flesh out their constructions “in 3D”- additional masses. I’m happy to see that you’ve been experimenting with additional masses on the majority of your constructions, and in most cases you’re making effective use of the logic shown in this diagram to figure out how to design their silhouette in a way that feels convincing.

While I don’t think you’re necessarily relying on additional contour lines to make your masses feel 3D, you are using a lot of them. Contour lines themselves fall into two categories. You've got those that sit along the surface of a single form (this is how they were first introduced in the organic forms with contour lines exercise, because it is the easiest way to do so), and you've got those that define the relationship and intersection between multiple forms - like those from the form intersections exercise. By their very nature, the form intersection type only really allows you to draw one such contour line per intersection, but the first type allows you to draw as many as you want. The question comes down to this: "how many do you really need?"

Unfortunately, that first type of contour line suffers from diminishing returns. The first one you add will probably help a great deal in making that given form feel three dimensional. The second however will help much less - but this still may be enough to be useful. The third, the fourth... their effectiveness and contribution will continue to drop off sharply, and you're very quickly going to end up in a situation where adding another will not help. I find it pretty rare that more than two is really necessary. Anything else just becomes excessive.

Be sure to consider this when you go through the planning phase of the contour lines you wish to add. Ask yourself what they're meant to contribute. Furthermore, ask yourself if you can actually use the second (form intersection) type instead - these are by their very nature vastly more effective, because of how they actually define the relationship between forms. This relationship causes each form to reinforce the other, solidifying the illusion that they exist in three dimensions. They'll often make the first type somewhat obsolete in many cases.

Once example of this would be leg construction, where the sausage method specifies adding one contour line to each joint leaving the midsection of the form clear and free-flowing. You’ve applied the contour lines correctly when following along with the wolf demo, but sometimes add them in a more random fashion or forget them entirely when building your own independent constructions. There’s also scope for you to be sticking more consistently to the characteristics of simple sausage forms when laying down your leg armatures, remember we’re aiming for two round ends of equal size connected by a bendy tube of consistent width.

When it comes to constructing paws, I'd like you to take a look at these notes on foot construction where Uncomfortable shows how to introduce structure to the foot by drawing a boxy form- that is, a form whose corners are defined in such a way that they imply the distinction between the different planes within its silhouette, without necessarily having to define those edges themselves - to lay down a structure that reads as being solid and three dimensional. Then we can use similarly boxy forms to attach toes. Please try using this strategy for constructing feet in future.

The next 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.

Wrapping this up with texture and detail, I’m gong to quote a section of the tiger head demo:

Lastly, an important note - when drawing eyes, or really anything that appears black in your reference image, DO NOT FILL IT IN WITH SOLID BLACK. I cannot stress this enough - we have an urge to fill in what we see as black, but this is no different from the orange of the tiger's fur. Just because it lines up with the colour we're drawing with does not mean that there is any benefit to filling it in. Instead, you should be treating everything in your subject matter as though it were solid white or grey.

If you’re unsure how to handle texture and detail in this course you can revisit these reminders as well as the detailed explanation provided in your lesson 4 critique.

Alright, I think that should cover it. Your spatial reasoning skills appear to be coming along well and I’ll be marking this lesson as complete. Feel free to move onto the 250 cylinder challenge, which is a prerequisite for lesson 6.

No problem, I'm happy to hear that the explanation helped to make it clearer.

Hi there ChildOfMalkav, I'll be the teaching assistant handling your lesson 4 critique. You might have felt that the lesson was hard on you, but scrolling through your submission I’m happy to confirm that you’ve done an excellent job.

Starting with your organic forms your linework appears smooth and confident, and you’re doing pretty well at sticking to the characteristics of simple sausages that are introduced here.

Your contour curves are similarly well done, they wrap around the surface of the forms convincingly. My only significant concern with this exercise is that the majority of your contour curves stick to a similar degree, which is a common mistake noted here in the exercise instructions.

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 this section of the ellipses page. 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.

Moving on to your insect constructions overall you've done very well, your linework continues to be smooth and purposeful, and I’m seeing evidence of using the ghosting method. You do a good job of following the constructional process by starting with simple solid forms and building up complexity gradually, piece by piece, without attempting to add more complexity than can be supported by the existing structures at any given point. It looks like you’re developing an understanding of how the forms you draw sit in a real 3D world, and not just as 2D shapes on your flat piece of paper, and that’s great to see.

The biggest point I want to talk about is additional information that'll continue to help you make the most out of these exercises as you continue forwards - rather than an actual mistake or thing you did incorrectly given the information you had.

Starting with this main point, it's all about understanding the distinction between actions we take that occur in 2D space, where we're focusing on the flat shapes and lines on the page, and the actions we take that occur in 3D space, where we're actually thinking about the forms as we combine them in three dimensions, and how they relate to one another. In the latter, we're actively considering how the way in which we draw the later forms respect and even reinforce the illusion that the existing structure is 3D.

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.

Fortunately you don’t actually cut back inside the silhouettes of existing forms very much, and the most obvious example I could find is the one I’ve marked with red hatching here. It looks like this may have come down to the ellipse of the thorax being a little loose (which is totally normal), and then you'd picked one of the inner edges to serve as the silhouette of the ball form you were constructing. This unfortunately leaves 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.

While cutting back into a silhouette is the easiest way to depict the issues with modifying a form after it's been drawn, there are other ways in which we can fall into this trap. On this image I also marked in blue some places where you'd extended off existing forms using partial, flat shapes, not quite providing enough information for us to understand how they actually connect to the existing structure in 3D space. While this approach worked for adding edge detail to leaves in the previous lesson, this is because leaves are paper-thin structures, so essentially they are already flat and altering their silhouette won’t flatten them further. When we want to build on forms that aren’t already flat we need to use another strategy.

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 beetle horn demo, as well as 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.

The next thing I wanted to talk about is leg construction. It looks like you were aiming to use the sausage method for most of your leg construction, and you generally do a fantastic job of sticking to simple sausage forms for your leg armatures.

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’m happy to see that you’ve taken a swing at building onto your sausage armatures on many of your pages, adding the sorts of lumps, bumps and complexity that you observe in these structures, arriving at a more characteristic representation of the leg in question than what can be achieved with the sausages alone. I have some diagrams to share with you that I hope will help you to build onto your leg structures “in 3D” more consistently as you move forwards.

• These diagrams show how we can add to the construction with complete 3D forms instead of flat shapes and one-off lines.

• This diagram shows how instead of fully engulfing an existing form within a new one, we can establish a clearer relationship between the existing form and the new addition by breaking it into two pieces.

• This ant leg demo shows how we can take the sausage method and push it further, adding all kinds of lumps bumps and spikes to the sausage armature.

• I’d also like to share this dog leg demo with you, which shows how the sausage method can be applied to animal legs. This is important, as we’d like you to continue to stick with the sausage method of leg construction when tackling your animals in the next lesson.

Before I wrap this up I see you had a query about how to differentiate between construction and detail. Essentially with construction phase we’re working explicitly- fully outlining each form we add to the construction. When we move onto the texture and detail phase, once the construction is complete, we want to start describing the smaller textural forms implicitly by only drawing the shadows that are cast by the textural forms onto the surface of the larger constructed forms, rather than outlining the textural forms themselves.

Construction and texture both focus on the same concept. With construction we're communicating to the viewer what they need to know to understand how they might manipulate this object with their hands, were it in front of them. With texture, we're communicating to the viewer what they need to know to understand what it'd feel like to run their fingers over the object's various surfaces. Both of these focus on communicating three dimensional information. Both sections have specific jobs to accomplish, and none of it has to do with making the drawing look nice. It looks like your efforts at adding texture are heading in the right direction, I liked what you did to describe the veins on the wings of your mosquito- you’re starting to work implicitly by drawing the shadows cast by the veins, rather than fully outlining the veins themselves.

And with that, I’ll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Please keep up the good work.

Hello PurePencil5, I'll be the teaching assistant handling your lesson 4 critique.

Starting with your organic forms with contour curves there is something to call out, it seems you did one page of contour ellipses, though the assignment was for both pages to be contour curves. Not a huge problem, but it does suggest that you may want to be more attentive when reading through the instructions.

You’re doing an excellent job with your linework in this exercise, it looks smooth and confident. It looks like your aiming to stick to the characteristics of simple sausages that are introduced here, and in most cases you’re not far off. I did notice a few forms where one end came out larger than the other (such as the three at the bottom of the first page) so keep striving to keep them even when practising this exercise in your warmups.

Your contour curves and ellipses are wrapping around the forms convincingly, and you’re clearly experimenting with shifting their degree as we slide along the length of the forms, nicely done.

Moving on to your insect constructions overall you've done very well, but there are a few points I want to draw to your attention. Some of them are points from previous lessons you may have forgotten, or aspects of techniques you may have neglected to apply, although the biggest point is additional information that'll continue to help you make the most out of these exercises as you continue forwards - rather than an actual mistake or thing you did incorrectly given the information you had.

Starting with this main point, it's all about understanding the distinction between actions we take that occur in 2D space, where we're focusing on the flat shapes and lines on the page, and the actions we take that occur in 3D space, where we're actually thinking about the forms as we combine them in three dimensions, and how they relate to one another. In the latter, we're actively considering how the way in which we draw the later forms respect and even reinforce the illusion that the existing structure is 3D.

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.

This occurs on a couple of pages, for example, I've marked on your cricket in red some areas where it looks like you cut back inside the silhouette of forms you had already drawn. If we look specifically at the thorax, you started with a rounded ball-like form as a first step, then later added a piece of armour plating wrapping over the top of this basic structure, which is a great way to develop complexity in your constructions. The thing is, the additional piece is sitting partially inside the original form, leaving the section filled with red hatching outside the final construction. This is spatially confusing for the viewer, and more importantly, you.

Along the underside of the abdomen the cut came down to there being a gap between lines passing around an ellipse (which is totally normal), and then you'd picked one of the inner edges to serve as the silhouette of the ball form you were constructing. This unfortunately leaves 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.

While cutting back into a silhouette is the easiest way to depict the issues with modifying a form after it's been drawn, there are other ways in which we can fall into this trap. On the cricket I also marked in blue some places where you'd extended off existing forms using partial, flat shapes, not quite providing enough information for us to understand how they actually connect to the existing structure in 3D space. While this approach worked for adding edge detail to leaves in the previous lesson, this is because leaves are paper-thin structures, so essentially they are already flat and altering their silhouette won’t flatten them further. When we want to build on forms that aren’t already flat we need to use another strategy.

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 beetle horn demo, as well as 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.

The next thing I wanted to talk about is leg construction. There’s a fair bit of variation in how closely your constructions stick to the specific requirements of the sausage method. 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 as shown in these examples here, and here. This tactic can be used extensively to develop the specific complexity of each particular leg, as shown in this example of an ant leg. I’ll also show how this can be applied to animals in this dog leg demo as we would like you to stick with the sausage method as closely as you can throughout lesson 5 too.

Please make sure that you stick to the characteristics of simple sausage forms (as introduced in the organic forms exercise) for each limb section, and that you draw each section in its entirety instead of cutting some of them off where they overlap. Once the sausages are in place, we apply one contour line to each joint (just like the contour lines introduced in the form intersections exercise) to define how the sausages penetrate one another in 3D space.

Before I wrap this up I just need to give you a quick reminder to draw around your ellipses 2-3 times before lifting your pen off the page, even if you feel like you can nail them in a single pass. This leans into the arm’s natural tendency to make elliptical motions and helps to keep them smooth and even. You do this correctly some of the time, but not consistently. As discussed in this section we ask people to do this for every ellipse that is drawn freehand in this course.

All right, your spatial reasoning skills appear to be developing nicely and I’ll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Please refer to this feedback as you tackle the next lesson, and apply the points discussed here to your animal constructions as you move forwards.

Hello again ckwd, I can see you’ve been mindful of the points called out in lesson 4, and your work is looking really strong.

Your organic intersections are a great start to the homework. You’re keeping your forms simple which helps them to feel solid, and you’re allowing them to slump over one another with a feeling of weight. You do a good job of piling the forms up convincingly in 3D and your shadows are helping to clarify the relationships between the forms.

Moving on to your animal constructions, you’ve really nailed it, and there isn’t much to criticise here. You have paid for a critique though, so I’ll go over the main topics we check on in this lesson, and see if there are any extra tips I can offer you along the way.

So, after checking that lines are being drawn confidently and intentionally, and that the major masses are being constructed correctly, one of the main points we cover is the use of additional masses to build upon the basic structures in 3D.

I’m honestly really pleased to see you using this tool to build on your constructions quite liberally, and the design of your masses is top-notch. It is clear that you’re specifically designing your masses to wrap around the existing structures using the logic shown in this diagram, and the silhouettes of your masses consistently demonstrate an excellent understanding of how the various pieces of your constructions sit in 3D space and connect together with specific relationships.

Another point to check on, is whether the sausage method is being used to construct legs, and if the specifics of the method have been fully understood. Again, your work is excellent in this regard, with chains of simple sausages being used to create an armature, and additional forms capturing any extra complexity required to develop the specific characteristics of the leg in question.

A lot of these additions focus primarily on forms that actually impact the silhouette of the overall leg, but there's value in exploring the forms that exist "internally" within that silhouette - like the missing puzzle piece that helps to further ground and define the ones that create the bumps along the silhouette's edge. Here is an example of what I mean, on another student's work. Uncomfortable has used green to block out masses along the leg there, and included the one fitting in between them all, even though it doesn't influence the silhouette. This way of thinking - about the inside of your structures, and fleshing out information that isn't just noticeable from one angle, but really exploring the construction in its entirety, will help you yet further push the value of these constructional exercises as puzzles.

Moving down to feet, it looks like you may have already seen these notes on foot construction as you often use a similar approach, capturing the solidity of the foot using a boxy form. Something you could do to enhance the solidity of some of your foot constructions is to construct the toes as their own complete 3D forms as shown in those notes. This will read as more 3D than adding the toes as partial shapes, which modifies the silhouette of the boxy foot form in 2D.

Another area that often causes difficulty 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.

It looks like you’re familiar with the method shown in that demo, and I can see those key points being applied successfully to many of your pages. I do have a few tips to offer you for head constructions.

• I noticed that you wound up having to construct subtractively to capture some of the open mouths. In this case I’m not too concerned as I can clearly see that you’re carving into the initial muzzle form while being mindful of how you’re slicing into it in 3D space. Uncomfortable will cover some subtractive construction in lessons 6 and 7, but for now as an alternative to cutting back inside the silhouettes of existing forms, we can construct an open mouth by building separate boxy forms for the upper and lower jaw, as shown in this simple squirrel head construction.

• It looks like you were adapting the branch construction method for the antlers of your deer, which is great. However when you wanted to refine those structures it looks like you did so by adding one-off lines, much like how we might add edge detail to a leaf. I’d just like to quickly direct you to this section which discusses building upon forms which aren’t already flat. As the antlers have volume, we’ll need to construct complete new forms to refine them, as you’ve done correctly throughout most areas of your constructions.

• One thing that can also help, specifically when dealing with eyes, is to draw the eyelids themselves as their own separate additional masses (one for the upper lid and another for the lower lid). This can help us better focus on how they're actually wrapping around the eyeball itself, as shown here, much moreso than trying to draw a single "eye" shape and having that conform to the eyeball's curvature.

All righty, I’ll go ahead and mark this as complete so you can move onto the cylinder challenge. Please keep up the good work.

Hello Zayleak, thank you for completing your revisions as requested.

Starting with your organic forms nice work hooking your contour curves around the form so they wrap around the surface more convincingly. I can also see that you’ve made a conscious effort to experiment with varying the degree of the curves, and usually resisted the temptation to redraw them to make corrections.

Remember to prioritize a smooth confident stroke for all of your linework. For the most part you’re doing okay, but there is some noticeable stiffness to a few of the contour curves and a lot of the small ellipses on the tips of the forms. Uncomfortable gave you some good advice on the possible causes and how to address them in your lesson 2 critique, so I’ll ask you to review that feedback for a fuller explanation on the topic.

Moving onto your insect constructions these are definitely moving in the right direction. I’ll be marking this as complete so that you can move onto the next lesson, but I do have some points that I’d like you to keep in mind and apply to your animal constructions as you move forwards.

• I’ve made some notes directly onto this page which I hope will help you make use of the space available to you. If the reference is obviously longer horizontally than it is tall, turn your page to match, so the long edges are at the top and bottom. This will allow you to make your construction larger without running out of room. Alternatively, if you’ve given a construction as much space as it needs and there’s still loads of blank space on the page, consider adding another one.

• The more complex a form is, the more difficult it is for the viewer (and more importantly, you) to understand how it is supposed to sit in 3D space, so the more likely it is to feel flat. This is starting to happen with the two primary forms I’d traced over here. To remedy this, keep the first forms you draw as simple as possible. It can help to set your intentions for what type of form you’re trying to draw if you name it. I don’t mean by calling it David or Stuart, but by thinking about which of the simple forms you know how to draw would be a good fit for the basic structure you want to construct. For organic constructions this will usually be an ellipse to represent a ball or stretched sphere, or an organic form that sticks to the characteristics of a simple sausage. Once the first forms are in place we can always add complexity by attaching more forms to the construction.

• I can see that you’re making an effort to work on the additive 3D construction discussed in the initial critique. Remember that additional forms should have their own complete silhouettes. On one of your pages here I’ve filled with blue some sections that were extended off existing forms with partial shapes. Unfortunately this doesn’t provide enough information for us to understand how the additions are supposed to attach to the existing structure in 3D, so they feel flat. I’ve included some notes and diagrams on your work showing how we might tackle the highlighted sections using additive 3D construction. By defining clear 3D relationships between the pieces, we reinforce the solidity of the construction as a whole.

• You’re doing pretty well at sticking with the sausage method for constructing legs, and I’d like you to continue to use the sausage method throughout the next lesson so that you get plenty of practice with it. When it comes to building upon those basic sausage structures, there are some strategies 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, 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.

Once you have completed your revisions please reply to the initial critique with a link to your work.

This is stated in the “next steps” section at the bottom of the critique.

Hello pmpman2001, I'll be the teaching assistant handling your lesson 4 critique.

Starting with your organic forms your lines appear smooth and confident, and you’re doing pretty well at sticking to the characteristics of simple sausages that are introduced here, nicely done!

It looks like you’re choosing which end of your form to place a contour ellipse onto at random. Remember that the small ellipses on the tip(s) of the forms are no different from the contour curves, in that they're all just contour lines running along the surface of the form. It's just that when the tip faces the viewer, we can see all the way around the surface, resulting in a full ellipse rather than just a partial curve. But where the end is pointing away from us, there would be no ellipse at all. Take a look at this diagram of the different ways in which our contour lines can change the way in which the sausage is perceived - note how the contour curves and the ellipses are always consistent, giving the same impression of which ends are facing towards the viewer and which are facing away.Here is a breakdown of how to place the contour ellipses on one of your pages, where I’ve crossed out the erroneous ones, and added those that were missing.

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 the diagram linked in the previous paragraph, showing the different ways in which our contour lines can change the way in which the sausage is perceived.

Moving on to your insect constructions it is clear that you put a great deal of effort into your work here, and in many ways your constructions are well done. You do a good job of starting with simple forms and building up complexity gradually in stages. It is great to see that you usually “draw through” your forms, drawing each piece in its entirety where structures overlap, so you can develop a stronger understanding of how they sit in 3D space.

As you progress through the course, it is very important that you remember to abide by the principles and techniques introduced in earlier lessons. As noted directly on your work here some of your linework is getting quite rough and sketchy. I would like you to revisit this page of lesson 1, to refresh your memory on the principles of markmaking, which students should make every effort to stick to throughout the course. When linework gets scratchy or wobbly, it usually comes down to one or both of the following:

• Incorrect or incomplete use of the ghosting method, as introduced in the ghosted lines exercise. In these exercises we want you to make use of the planning phase to ensure that the thinking is done before the pen touches the page. Each line should be the result of a conscious decision, and serve a clear purpose. Using the preparation (ghosting) phase will allow you to build up temporary muscle memory, ensuring that the execution phase can be completed confidently, making smooth continuous mark. Skipping one of the phases will result in lines that are either stiff and hesitant (as we try to figure out how to draw the line as we make the mark) or haphazard and messy (as we try to rely on the very instincts that the exercises are designed to train).

• Restricting the range of motion by drawing from the wrist instead of engaging the shoulder and using the whole arm. You can refresh your memory of how to use your arm by visiting this page.

It is pretty clear from your organic forms pages that you are capable of using the ghosting method and drawing from the shoulder, so I’ll just leave this as a reminder that you should be doing so throughout your constructions as well as in the technical exercises.

The next point I need to talk about relates to differentiating between the actions we can take when interacting with a construction, which fall into two groups:

• Actions in 2D space, where we're just putting lines down on a page, without necessarily considering the specific nature of the relationships between the forms they're meant to represent and the forms that already exist in the scene.

• Actions in 3D space, where we're actually thinking about how each form we draw exists in 3D space, and how it relates to the existing 3D structures already present. We draw them in a manner that actually respects the 3D nature of what's already there, and even reinforces it.

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.

I can see this occurring on quite a few your pages. For example, I've marked on your ant in red some areas where it looks like you cut back inside the silhouette of forms you had already drawn.

While cutting back into a silhouette is the easiest way to depict the issues with modifying a form after it's been drawn, there are other ways in which we can fall into this trap. On the same image I also marked in blue some places where you'd extended off existing forms using partial, flat shapes, not quite providing enough information for us to understand how they actually connect to the existing structure in 3D space. While this approach worked for adding edge detail to leaves in the previous lesson, this is because leaves are paper-thin structures, so essentially they are already flat and altering their silhouette won’t flatten them further. When we want to build on forms that aren’t already flat we need to use another strategy.

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 beetle horn demo, as well as 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.

You may have noticed that the markup on your ant also has some areas circled with question marks next to them. These are a few examples of places where it was unclear where the edge of your forms were supposed to be. 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 emphasizes the importance of making one mark only. Correcting mistakes isn't actually helpful, given that the end result of the exercise is far less relevant and significant than the actual process used to achieve it. Rather, having a habit of correcting your mistakes can lean into the idea of not investing as much time into each individual stroke, and so it's something that should be avoided in favour of putting as much time as is needed to execute each mark.

Moving on, I wanted to take a moment to talk about leg construction. It looks like you had the sausage method in mind for most of your leg constructions, which is a good start, but I need to make it very clear that sausage forms are not ellipses. Sausage forms have the same properties that are introduced in the organic forms exercise, and just like the organic forms, we only draw around them once. When we start drawing multiple circuits around them, this leans into the arm’s natural tendency to make elliptical motions and can lead to accidentality drawing ellipses instead of sausage forms.

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 as shown in these examples here, and here. This tactic can be used extensively to develop the specific complexity of each particular leg, as shown in this example of an ant leg. I’ll also show how this can be applied to animals in this dog leg demo as we would like you to stick with the sausage method as closely as you can throughout lesson 5 too.

Now the last thing I want to discuss is in regards to your approach to the detail phase, once the construction is handled. I noticed that you’re still filling in huge areas with solid black and using hatching to create form shading which ThatOneMushroomGuy specifically called out as mistakes in your lesson 3 critique. Please make every effort to apply the advice provided to you to the best of your understanding and ability, and if something said to you in a critique is unclear or confusing you are allowed to ask questions.

In effect, you're getting caught up in decorating your drawings (making them more visually interesting and pleasing by whatever means at your disposal - usually pulling information from direct observation and drawing it as you see it), which is not what the texture section of Lesson 2 really describes. Decoration itself is not a clear goal - there's no specific point at which we've added "enough".

What we're doing in this course can be broken into two distinct sections - construction and texture - and they both focus on the same concept. With construction we're communicating to the viewer what they need to know to understand how they might manipulate this object with their hands, were it in front of them. With texture, we're communicating to the viewer what they need to know to understand what it'd feel like to run their fingers over the object's various surfaces. Both of these focus on communicating three dimensional information. Both sections have specific jobs to accomplish, and none of it has to do with making the drawing look nice.

Instead of focusing on decoration, what we draw here comes down to what is actually physically present in our construction, just on a smaller scale. As discussed back in Lesson 2's texture section, we focus on each individual textural form, focusing on them one at a time and using the information present in the reference image to help identify and understand how every such textural form sits in 3D space, and how it relates within that space to its neighbours. Once we understand how the textural form sits in the world, we then design the appropriate shadow shape that it would cast on its surroundings. The shadow shape is important, because it's that specific shape which helps define the relationship between the form casting it, and the surface receiving it.

As a result of this approach, you'll find yourself thinking less about excuses to add more ink, and instead you'll be working in the opposite - trying to get the information across while putting as little ink down as is strictly needed, and using those implicit markmaking techniques from Lesson 2 to help you with that. In particular, these notes are a good section to review, at minimum.

All right, I think that for the most part you’ve done pretty well with the concepts introduced in lesson 4, but in neglecting techniques from earlier lessons and advice from your previous critique your efforts have been undermined. I’m going to ask you to complete some additional pages to address the various points discussed here before moving onto the next lesson.

Please complete three pages of insect constructions, at least one of which should be construction only, with no texture. For the other two pages you can add texture of you wish, but it is optional.

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

Starting with your organic intersections these are coming along well. You’re demonstrating a good grasp of how the forms relate to one another in 3D space. Keep thinking about how gravity will affect the forms, causing them to slump and sag into a position where they feel stable and supported. Leaving huge gaps beneath forms, like the section marked with red hatching here, can leave the form feeling a little stiff. Think about these forms being soft and heavy, like well filled water balloons.

I did notice that you’re still keeping all your contour curves roughly the same degree, which inhibits your ability to communicate how the forms turn in space. One way to better understand the degree changes is to observe objects with a circular cross section, for example with this album of photos of a slinky. You can also see the degree shift in action in the lesson 1 ellipses video. Watch what happens to the appearance of the cardboard discs as Uncomfortable moves them around.

Moving on to your animal constructions, we don’t normally need to see the references, but it doesn’t hurt to include them as you have done here, and in some cases they can be useful.

Looking through your constructions, there’s plenty of good work going on here, your core construction is solid, and I’m seeing plenty of indications that you’re thinking about your constructions in 3D- some of the time.

Unfortunately there are quite a few places where the 3D illusion gets undermined, and largely this occurs where you’d strayed away from sticking to the rule introduced in your lesson 4 feedback.

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.

As an example I’ve taken your pudu and red wolf and marked them in a similar fashion to the insect constructions in your previous critique, using red for areas where it looks like you tried to cut back inside the silhouettes of forms you had already drawn, and blue where you’d extended the silhouettes of existing forms by adding one-off lines and flat partial shapes.

Sometimes the diagrams I shared previously don’t click for people, so I can also share this diagram showing examples of the various types of actions we can take when engaging with a construction. When working on organic constructions in this course we’d like you to strive to only take actions by adding in 3D, by constructing complete new forms when you want to build on the construction or alter something.

To help you to construct the legs in 3D we would like you to stick with the sausage method for constructing legs, as was specified in your lesson 4 feedback. The red wolf shows that you do understand the first steps of the sausage method, but it honestly doesn’t look like you were attempting to use sausages for most of your leg constructions, and many of them fall flat as a result. If you’re unsure how to use the sausage method, you can find a pretty detailed example with the donkey demo on the informal demos page.

Another point that it looks like you may have forgotten, is to think about the specific purpose of any additional contour lines you wish to add, as they suffer from diminishing returns and piling on a whole bunch won’t have any significant benefit over just one or possibly two. While adding contour lines that don’t contribute isn’t a big deal in itself, they can actually trick us into thinking we can use them as a cure-all to make things more 3D, or to fix parts of the construction that aren’t working very well. In turn this can lead us into investing less time and effort into the design of the forms themselves- with the impression that we can fix them later.

Given that the above three points constituted more than half of your lesson 4 critique, you may want to take a moment to analyse what tactics you’ve been using to make sure you remember and apply the advice that has been provided to you, and think about if there’s anything you can do to make this more effective. Some students find rereading previous feedback periodically, taking notes in their own words, or a combination of the two to be necessary for applying the advice they receive.

Moving on, there are a few pieces of information specific to lesson 5 which I need to discuss.

In lesson 5 we introduce a very effective tool for students to use to flesh out their constructions “in 3D”- additional masses. I’m happy to see that you’ve been experimenting with additional masses on the majority of your constructions, although it can be quite puzzling to figure out exactly how to design their silhouette in a way that feels convincing.

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.

On your wolf I’ve made a few modifications to some of the additional masses to create more specific relationships between the masses and the existing structure.

• 1 was an example of a mass staying soft and rounded all the way around its silhouette, avoiding introducing any complexity to it, which robs us of some of the tools we need to explain how it wraps around the existing forms. I’ve redrawn the mass, introducing some sharp corners leading to inward curves where the mass wraps around the underlying form of the torso sausage. I’ve also made use of the thigh mass where the top of the leg attaches to the side of the body, pressing the additional mass against this bulky protrusion. The more interlocked they are, the more spatial relationships we define between the masses, the more solid and grounded everything appears.

• 2 was an example of cutting additional masses off where they overlap. Remember each new form should have its own complete, fully enclosed silhouette. As I’d already drawn mass 1, it becomes part of the existing structure and mass 2 wraps around it like any other underlying form.

• 3 you may notice that I’m not adding any extra contour curves to the additional masses. Aim to design the silhouette so that the mass feels convincing without needing to cover it in contour lines.

• 4 here I’m using additional masses to develop the leg construction, instead of flattening the construction by adding one-off lines.

On your pudu I’ve noted on the belly that additional masses can also be used as a solution for refining the construction instead of cutting back inside the silhouette of forms you have already drawn and undermining the solidity of the construction.

Along the top of the animal’s back I’m showing how to pull the masses down around the side of the torso to give them a firmer grip on the construction. You’ll definitely want to avoid leaving gaps between additional masses and the forms they’re meant to attach to, which I’ve called out at the base of the neck.

While I had the image open I’ve also redrawn one of the hind legs using the sausage method. You did a good job of using an ellipse to construct the thigh, where the top of the leg attaches to the torso. Green is step one, the sausage forms, red are contour lines where the forms intersect at the joints. Purple are additional forms, to further develop the specific character of the leg, while maintaining the 3D illusion.

When it comes to constructing paws, I'd like you to study these notes on foot construction where Uncomfortable shows how to introduce structure to the foot by drawing a boxy form- that is, a form whose corners are defined in such a way that they imply the distinction between the different planes within its silhouette, without necessarily having to define those edges themselves - to lay down a structure that reads as being solid and three dimensional. Then we can use similarly boxy forms to attach toes. Please try using this strategy for constructing feet in future.

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, there are a number of areas where I would like you to demonstrate your understanding, so I am going to assign some additional pages for you to address the various points discussed here.

Please complete 4 pages of animal constructions.