Lifebeat

Here's the extra 50 cylinder around arbitrary minor axis(es?).

I can definitely feel it's been a while since I've used my shoulder to draw ellipses, but it feels great to get into the rhythm.

Also, looking at ellipses 9 and 32, I'm curious: Is there a limit to how much you can foreshorten?

The illusion of foreshortening seems less effective on these two ellipses in particular, so it caught my attention a little.

Here's the additional two new animals.

I still have a tendency to really, really want to edit silhouettes. It's probably going to take some time for me to get used to, but I am getting increasingly more aware of when I do it. But honestly, a few more animals to reinforce getting rid of the habit would still benefit me.

https://imgur.com/a/J65MCps

Here's the additional two pages of animals that I have attempted to work with your critique in mind: https://imgur.com/a/phrlnmA

I had to stop myself multiple times from the temptation to modify the silhouettes to attempt to "fix" them (which ironically worsens them) as you mentioned in your critique, and with enough practice and reminding, every time I attempted to do it out of reflex, I caught myself and stopped it in time. It's sort of grown on me already, and I now just add additional forms instead. So as far as I'm aware, there shouldn't be any "fixed" silhouettes in the additional animals.

That aside, I made some pretty significant errors in two cases:

First, the armadillo's shell. I'm not sure if it's visible, but I very quickly almost fell into the trap of simply drawing the silhouette instead of the shape, just like the tail of the bird from this very lesson that i submitted earlier in which you also pointed out how I had no structure on. Eventually, I went with a pseudo-sausage shape with more blocky and pointy edges with a few contour lines that read the shape of the shell well enough. I feel like there could have been a better approach, though. Perhaps a normal sausage shape with organic forms that would shape the shell as a whole? But wouldn't that retract from the hard, blocky reading from the shell? I'm sure you might have some advice there, and I'd love to hear it.

Secondly, this one isn't so important in the bigger picture, but it's still something that can be improved upon; the crododile's left hand (from his perspective) became so line-busy that I couldn't really read my own shapes and construction after I finished the head, and so I opted out on applying more lines knowing it'd just make a mess out of the head construction and possibly break it. The obvious solution is to simply draw it bigger, and that's what i'm going to do next time. That said, I'm curious, do you have any advice on how to lessen the line business in an area of a construction where you know it's going to have a lot of lines?

Lastly, just to mention it, I figured I'd take some more exotic animals like the armadillo and crocodile that weren't too similar in their construction since I feel I'd learn more from it. "Luckily", they were definitely harder, and I made more mistakes as a results. That's why I really hope I have to make another re-do of the homework since it'd be so beneficial, but it's really up to you to decide. I'm ready to advance to the next lesson or get some more animal practice in either way.

Here's the new 4 insects as requested.

The "no contour lines allowed" criteria was incredibly helpful for me. As you said, intersecting forms are a far more powerful tool for illustrating how forms exist in 3D space. The transition from almost exclusively using contour lines to intersections was quite a tough one (as I'm sure you can see especially clearly on the "Spiky Weevil" insect where I straight up swallow an entire form, and then proceed to draw the next ones correctly, looking at it's spikes), but one I am absolutely elated to have finally understood how to apply correctly, even if it's a concept that's still in the very early stages for me.

While I still have trouble not just using basic shapes in an attempt to capture the entire detail of a form (instead of using basic shapes with additional organic forms), this has certainly helped me understand how to apply them. It's something I feel will come with mileage and additional practice.

I'm quite happy to have understood forms in general a lot better than when I submitted my initial Lesson 4 homework, and to be quite honest, should these extra four insects not pass, I would be completely fine redoing them again, just for how much they taught me.

Here's the 3 additional plant constructions, as well as the missing Branches page!

I tried to simplify the image into the most simple shapes as I could, I hope I got it right this time!

Here's the 5 boxes you requested! I applied 2 total for the outside lines of each box as pointed out, let me know if it's done properly!

Your explanation of hesitating being an choice really made a difference for my understanding of how to approach the confidence problem I have.

In a way, it's much like preparing to dive into cold water, but knowing it's cold (in my case fearing failure), I never get swimming in the first place. The example of three men having their own specific tasks on the assembly line really helped visualize exactly what my issue was, and I actually tried doing a few extra exercises with the mindset you had in mind, and found that my confidence actually grew.

While it's something I have to get used to (and probably for a good amount of time), I slowly started reducing the times I had to ghost my lines, and the acceptance that whatever chance I had to stop is now already behind me allowed me to loosen up much more up.

Many thanks for the input, It really helped me out!

I have redone the two additional pages of Super-Imposed Lines and Ellipses In Planes as you requested, here they are!

Hey Nihlex, thanks for the criticism!

As you very accurately point out, artistic confidence is by far the largest issue that hinders most of my progress, and it's something I'm not sure how exactly I would be able to tackle.

Long story short, despite wanting to become a concept artist for most of my life, I have had a really rough and unfortunate start when it comes to drawing, and while I know most of the technical skills can be trained through Drawabox (Which I am incredibly happy with!), artistic self-confidence is an issue I don't know what to do with.

In a more practical example, the ghosting in the Super Imposed Lines and Table of Ellipses exercises, I grow more and more insecure about screwing up as I ghost a line that I would often have to ghost the line 40-50 times before then putting the pen on the paper, immediately panic as I don't believe I can do it, and then produce the wobbly lines seen through the results as my brain takes over in fear of failure.

I've tried most usual suggestions such as trying to calm down as much as possible before doing the exercises, trying to completely focus on the task at hand, convince myself that this is not something I should judge myself on, but insecurity always sets in.

I don't know if there are any exercises for "believing in yourself", but If you had any ideas, suggestions or advice at all, I would love to hear them as this is by far the most important issue when it comes to improving!