Uncomfortable

Jumping right in with your arrows, phenomenal work. You've done a great job of focusing on a confident execution to lean into the fluidity with which your arrows move through space, and you've also conveyed a strong sense of depth in the scene by leaning into the application of foreshortening to both the positive and negative space of the structures.

Looking at your sausage forms with contour lines, you've similarly done well. You're clearly focusing on adhering to the characteristics of simple sausages (it's not perfect, but that's entirely normal - these will continue to improve with practice, we mainly just want to make sure you're aiming for the right characteristics), your contour lines are drawn confidently so as to achieve even shapes and appropriate curvatures, and you're clearly taking the shifting degree into consideration as you draw each contour line. Just one small thing to keep in mind - don't forget to draw through all of your ellipses two full times, as is required for all of the ellipses we freehand in this course - including the small ones at the tips of your sausages.

Continuing onto the texture section, one thing to keep in mind is that the concepts we introduce relating to texture rely on skills our students generally don't have right now - because they're the skills this entire course is designed to develop. That is, spatial reasoning. Understanding how the textural forms sit on a given surface, and how they relate to the surfaces around them (which is necessary to design the shadow they would cast) is a matter of understanding 3D spatial relationships. The reason we introduce it here is to provide context and direction for what we'll explore later - similarly to the rotated boxes/organic perspective boxes in Lesson 1 introducing a problem we engage with more thoroughly in the box challenge. Ultimately my concern right now is just how closely you're adhering to the underlying steps and procedure we prescribe (especially those in these reminders).

You've done a great job of leaning into this approach, both in your texture analyses and your dissections. Though there are a few spots where you still use one-off strokes (and so I'll give you the explanation I provide to students explaining why it's best to stick to that two-step methodology for all the textural marks we draw throughout this course), you did so far, far less than most, so I'm really pleased with your results here.

As for that explanation: while it's true that there are certainly going to be shadows that are cast that are so small they can't reasonably be executed using our two step methodology, in such cases it's better to actually leave them out, for the following reasons:

• A designed shape, despite not being something we can create quite as small as a one-off stroke, tapers in a more nuanced, delicate fashion, whereas a one-off stroke is more likely to end in a manner that feels more sudden. Thus, the shapes lean better into our goal of creating a gradient that transitions from black to white (and ultimately we have to pick a point for the shadows to drop off altogether anyway, so pushing a little farther with singular strokes isn't strictly necessary).

• Drawing in one-off strokes allows us to lean more into drawing directly from observation (as opposed to observing, understanding the forms that we see as they exist in 3D space, then creating shadows based on that understanding), which can be very tempting as it can allow us to create more visually pleasing things without all of the extra baggage of thinking in 3D. But of course, 3D spatial reasoning is the purpose of this course.

Moving onto the form intersections, this exercise serves two main purposes:

• Similarly to the textures, it introduces the problem of the intersection lines themselves, which students are not expected to understand how to apply successfully, but rather just make an attempt at - this will continue to be developed from lessons 3-7, and this exercise will return in the homework in lessons 6 and 7 for additional analysis, and advice where it is deemed to be necessary). The way in which you're drawing your intersection lines clearly shows that you're thinking through the way in which these forms relate to one another in 3D space - and you're honestly making really good headway, and are further along with this than most.

• The other, far more important use of this exercise (at least in the context of this stage in the course) is that it is essentially a combination of everything we've introduced thus far. The principles of linework, the use of the ghosting method, the concepts surrounding ellipses along with their axes/degrees, perspective, foreshortening, convergence, the Y method, and so forth - all of it is present in this exercise. Where we've already confirmed your general grasp of these concepts in isolation in previous exercises, it is in presenting it all together that can really challenge a student's patience and discipline, and so it allows us to catch any issues that might interfere with their ability to continue forward as meaningfully as we intend.

As to this latter point, you're similarly doing well - you're demonstrating a great deal of patience and care in applying all of the methodologies and strategies. There's just one quick point to call out - when drawing your cylinders, remember that you should not be defaulting to keeping any set of edges parallel on the page. This only occurs when the intent is for those edges (and in this case, the cylinders as a whole) to be oriented perpendicularly to the viewer's angle of sight. If that is not specifically your intent - and in this exercise it would not be, since we're rotating our forms arbitrarily in space - be sure to always include some minimal amount of visible convergence.

Lastly, your organic intersections are similarly coming along well. You're clearly thinking through how the forms drape over one another under the influence of gravity, and you're making good headway in considering how the cast shadows can be used to further emphasize those relationships.

All in all, great work! I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Keep up the great work!

Starting with your arrows,

• Nice work focusing on the executing of those side edges with confidence, to help lean into the fluidity with which the arrows move through space.

• When it comes to the application of foreshortening to the positive space of your arrows, this is a bit mixed - you have a lot of cases where there isn't much of a size differential, and only a small handful that have a noticeable change in size from one end to the other. You'll find more information on this both in the video for the exercise and here in the written material.

• Similarly, as the gaps between your zigzagging sections remain fairly consistent, you're not really applying foreshortening to the negative space of your arrows (which would cause the gaps to compress the further back we look). This is also covered in the video, and here in the written material.

Looking at your sausages with contour lines,

• It does seem you're largely aiming to stick to the characteristics of simple sausages, although you do tend to have one side frequently being at least a bit larger than the end closer to the viewer. That's not abnormal, and nailing the characteristics is expected to take a good bit of practice, but keep it in mind as you continue working on this.

• When drawing your contour lines and deciding which degree to use for each individual contour line, remember to factor in the orientation of that particular slice of the sausage. More info on that here, and in the exercise's video.

Continuing onto the texture section, one thing to keep in mind is that the concepts we introduce relating to texture rely on skills our students generally don't have right now - because they're the skills this entire course is designed to develop. That is, spatial reasoning. Understanding how the textural forms sit on a given surface, and how they relate to the surfaces around them (which is necessary to design the shadow they would cast) is a matter of understanding 3D spatial relationships. The reason we introduce it here is to provide context and direction for what we'll explore later - similarly to the rotated boxes/organic perspective boxes in Lesson 1 introducing a problem we engage with more thoroughly in the box challenge. Ultimately my concern right now is just how closely you're adhering to the underlying steps and procedure we prescribe (especially those in these reminders).

You've clearly leaned hard into this approach in your texture analyses, which is great to see. It is fairly common for students to lean into one-off strokes as you did in your dissections, but when tackling textural problems as you move forward through this course, try to stick to the more controlled approach of outlining/designing shadow shapes, then filling them in. While it's true that there are certainly going to be shadows that are cast that are so small they can't reasonably be executed using our two step methodology, in such cases it's better to actually leave them out, for the following reasons:

• A designed shape, despite not being something we can create quite as small as a one-off stroke, tapers in a more nuanced, delicate fashion, whereas a one-off stroke is more likely to end in a manner that feels more sudden. Thus, the shapes lean better into our goal of creating a gradient that transitions from black to white (and ultimately we have to pick a point for the shadows to drop off altogether anyway, so pushing a little farther with singular strokes isn't strictly necessary).

• Drawing in one-off strokes allows us to lean more into drawing directly from observation (as opposed to observing, understanding the forms that we see as they exist in 3D space, then creating shadows based on that understanding), which can be very tempting as it can allow us to create more visually pleasing things without all of the extra baggage of thinking in 3D. But of course, 3D spatial reasoning is the purpose of this course.

Anyway, that's just something to keep in mind - as it stands, you're making good progress in terms of developing those observational skills.

Moving onto the form intersections, this exercise serves two main purposes:

• Similarly to the textures, it introduces the problem of the intersection lines themselves, which students are not expected to understand how to apply successfully, but rather just make an attempt at - this will continue to be developed from lessons 3-7, and this exercise will return in the homework in lessons 6 and 7 for additional analysis, and advice where it is deemed to be necessary). It is clear from the way you're drawing your intersections that you're thinking through how these forms relate to one another in 3D space, which is precisely what we hope to see at this stage, so nice work there.

• The other, far more important use of this exercise (at least in the context of this stage in the course) is that it is essentially a combination of everything we've introduced thus far. The principles of linework, the use of the ghosting method, the concepts surrounding ellipses along with their axes/degrees, perspective, foreshortening, convergence, the Y method, and so forth - all of it is present in this exercise. Where we've already confirmed your general grasp of these concepts in isolation in previous exercises, it is in presenting it all together that can really challenge a student's patience and discipline, and so it allows us to catch any issues that might interfere with their ability to continue forward as meaningfully as we intend.

In regards to the latter point, overall you're doing well, but there's one key point that you need to keep in mind - though we do want to keep foreshortening very shallow in this exercise, it seems that you've largely tried forcing all of your vanishing points to infinity, resulting in those edges being drawn as parallel lines on the page. Vanishing points only get pushed to infinity when that set of edges is intended to be oriented perpendicularly to the viewer's angle of sight, not slanting towards or away from the viewer through the depth of the scene.

So for example, looking at this cylinder, it pretty clearly isn't meant to be oriented perpendicularly to the direction the viewer is looking, and so its edges shouldn't be parallel to one another on the page. Technically in this exercise, since we're rotating the forms arbitrarily in space, none of them are going to be so perfectly aligned - so you'd want to include some minimal amount of visible convergence in every situation where your intention isn't that specific orientation.

Lastly, your organic intersections are coming along well - you're clearly thinking about how those forms drape over one another under the influence of gravity. When it comes to the cast shadows, you're making good headway in applying them, but there are few main things to keep in mind:

• Cast shadows are projected onto surfaces, and so as those surfaces bend in space (like for example the curving surface of a sausage) the shadows will follow that, as shown here.

• Keep in mind the direction the light is coming from when deciding where those shadows should be cast - it should be kept consistent, since it's all coming from the same light source.

• It's more likely that it was an inconsistent light source issue, but don't blend cast shadows and line weight - they are conceptually different things. So for example here you've got the shadow crawling up along the silhouette of the sausage, along its upper edge. The light is clearly above the pile, so it wouldn't be casting a shadow upwards, and if it's meant to be line weight, it wouldn't be adhering to the specific approach for line weight we explored here in Lesson 1 - focusing on specific, localized areas where line overlaps need to be clarified (as opposed to long sections), and line weight should be kept subtle (as opposed to very bold and overt, like cast shadows).

Overall, you've done pretty well. While I was on the fence about assigning revisions for the arrows, that exercise is going to come up again at the beginning of Lesson 3, so I'll leave you to address the issues there. You can consider this lesson complete.

Jumping right in with your arrows, great work executing your side edges with confidence so as to lean into the fluidity with which the arrow structures move through space, and in including a generous size differential between the opposite sides of your arrows to correctly depict the application of foreshortening to the positive space of the arrow. When it comes to the negative space however - that is the gaps between the zigzagging sections - those should be compressing more and more the further we look back, as discussed here, so be sure to keep that in mind.

Looking at your sausages with contour lines,

• Nice work sticking to the characteristics of simple sausages. The little hitch where you close the loop will improve with practice, though one thing you can do to help with that is to try and aim to have your line continue a little further, so that it overlaps the start. This can shift how the brain engages with the problem, subtly influencing it to consider how to have the alignment factor in as well. You'll also come across this sort of concept in Lesson 3's branches exercise.

• Your contour ellipses and contour curves are generally being drawn well and with confidence, although do make sure that you're drawing through the small ellipses at the tips of your sausages too, as is required for all of the ellipses we freehand throughout this course.

• Additionally, lean a bit more towards having the contour lines being smaller (and contained within the silhouette) rather than letting them spill out. With practice your accuracy will improve, along with your ability to fit them snugly within the silhouette, although in the meantime having them be a bit smaller will ensure that there's no marks spilling outside of the sausage to potentially undermine its solidity. You'll find more info about this here.

Continuing onto the texture section, one thing to keep in mind is that the concepts we introduce relating to texture rely on skills our students generally don't have right now - because they're the skills this entire course is designed to develop. That is, spatial reasoning. Understanding how the textural forms sit on a given surface, and how they relate to the surfaces around them (which is necessary to design the shadow they would cast) is a matter of understanding 3D spatial relationships. The reason we introduce it here is to provide context and direction for what we'll explore later - similarly to the rotated boxes/organic perspective boxes in Lesson 1 introducing a problem we engage with more thoroughly in the box challenge. Ultimately my concern right now is just how closely you're adhering to the underlying steps and procedure we prescribe (especially those in these reminders).

As it stands I can see lots of places you've employed this methodology of outlining/designing shadow shapes before filling them in, primarily in your texture analyses. That said, there's still plenty of places where you're using one-off strokes - which is pretty common at this stage, since students at this point are usually more focused on observation, and aren't spending as much time thinking about how the forms they observe sit in space. As you tackle textural problems further into the course, try to use this two-step approach to the exclusion of all others. While it's true that there are certainly going to be shadows that are cast that are so small they can't reasonably be executed using our two step methodology, in such cases it's better to actually leave them out, for the following reasons:

• A designed shape, despite not being something we can create quite as small as a one-off stroke, tapers in a more nuanced, delicate fashion, whereas a one-off stroke is more likely to end in a manner that feels more sudden. Thus, the shapes lean better into our goal of creating a gradient that transitions from black to white (and ultimately we have to pick a point for the shadows to drop off altogether anyway, so pushing a little farther with singular strokes isn't strictly necessary).

• Drawing in one-off strokes allows us to lean more into drawing directly from observation (as opposed to observing, understanding the forms that we see as they exist in 3D space, then creating shadows based on that understanding), which can be very tempting as it can allow us to create more visually pleasing things without all of the extra baggage of thinking in 3D. But of course, 3D spatial reasoning is the purpose of this course.

But for the purposes of this lesson, you're doing fine, and demonstrating well developing observational skills.

Moving onto the form intersections, this exercise serves two main purposes:

• Similarly to the textures, it introduces the problem of the intersection lines themselves, which students are not expected to understand how to apply successfully, but rather just make an attempt at - this will continue to be developed from lessons 3-7, and this exercise will return in the homework in lessons 6 and 7 for additional analysis, and advice where it is deemed to be necessary). The way in which you're approaching the intersection lines very clearly demonstrates how you're thinking about the relationships between the forms as they sit in 3D space, which is exactly what we hope to see at this stage.

• The other, far more important use of this exercise (at least in the context of this stage in the course) is that it is essentially a combination of everything we've introduced thus far. The principles of linework, the use of the ghosting method, the concepts surrounding ellipses along with their axes/degrees, perspective, foreshortening, convergence, the Y method, and so forth - all of it is present in this exercise. Where we've already confirmed your general grasp of these concepts in isolation in previous exercises, it is in presenting it all together that can really challenge a student's patience and discipline, and so it allows us to catch any issues that might interfere with their ability to continue forward as meaningfully as we intend.

As to this latter point, you're also doing very well, and demonstrating a great deal of patience and care in applying all of those methodologies in their entirety. I do however have two main points to call to your attention:

• For this exercise, avoid stretched forms as discussed here. You've got a lot of long cylinders here.

• Also in relation to cylinders, you mostly avoided this but because it came up here I figured I'd quickly point it out - remember that the side edges would only be parallel like that if the intent was for that cylinder to run perpendicular to the viewer's angle of sight, since those are the conditions that would push their VP to infinity. If that is not your intent - and in this exercise we're really just rotating our forms arbitrarily in space, so it wouldn't be - be sure to always include some minimal amount of visible convergence, as you did with your other cylinders.

And lastly, your organic intersections are coming along well. They clearly demonstrate that you're thinking about how these forms drape over one another under the influence of gravity, and you're making good headway in the use of your cast shadows.

All in all, solid work. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete.

Jumping in with your cylinders around arbitrary minor axes, your linework is all confident and consistent, which is great to see, and results in evenly shaped ellipses as well as smooth, straight lines. You've also been quite mindful and fastidious in identifying the true minor axes of your ellipses, when testing their alignment compared to what was intended.

That said, there is a pretty substantial issue that isn't present across all of your cylinders, but appears to be sporadically present throughout that implies some degree of misunderstanding as to the mechanics of how these cylinders are to be constructed. It comes down to the relationship between the two ends of the cylinders, both in terms of their degree (the width of the narrower span of the ellipse) and the overall scale of each ellipse. As discussed in the lesson material,

• The end closer to the viewer will always be narrower in its degree, and larger in its overall scale.

• The end farther away from the viewer will always be wider in its degree, and smaller in its overall scale.

So for example, 53 here exhibits both of these qualities. Closer end is narrower but larger (specifically you can think of the "larger" here as speaking more to the major axis of the ellipse, perpendicular to the lengthwise direction of the cylinder), and the farther end is wider but smaller.

Conversely, if we look at examples like 147 and 149 on this page, as well as 70, 74, 76 and 79 on this page (there are many others throughout your work), this relationship is mixed up. Based on the green minor axis arrows on the correct cases all pointing away from the viewer along that cylinder's length, it seems like your intent might be correct in regards to the degrees, but that the overall scale is inverted with the far end getting considerably larger, which would entirely contradict the basic principle of perspective that things get smaller as they move farther away.

When issues like this are consistent throughout a set, it implies a misunderstanding - but when they're inconsistent, mixed with cases that are perfectly correct as yours are here, it rather implies that you may not be paying as much attention to the actual choices you're making as you apply yourself to the exercise, and may be instead relying on your instincts, your auto-pilot, to make those decisions for you, as is not an entirely uncommon occurrence. It would however undermine how this course is intended to be employed - that is, the purpose of what we're doing here is to train your auto-pilot so it can be reliable when drawing your own things outside of this course, but the way we achieve that is by being as intentional and mindful of our choices as possible, making conscious decisions at each step, so those thought patterns can be pushed down into our subconscious.

After all, training one's auto-pilot while relying on that auto-pilot is an approach that generally results in a mess, where the brain is pulled in many different directions, instead of having a singular methodology repeated over and over until it becomes automatic.

Continuing onto your cylinders in boxes, your work here is much more in line with the instructions, although once I provide some additional context as to how this exercise works, I have one suggestion on how you can get a fair bit more out of it than you may have thus far. This exercise is really all about helping develop students' understanding of how to construct boxes which feature two opposite faces which are proportionally square, regardless of how the form is oriented in space. We do this not by memorizing every possible configuration, but rather by continuing to develop your subconscious understanding of space through repetition, and through analysis (by way of the line extensions).

Where the box challenge's line extensions helped to develop a stronger sense of how to achieve more consistent convergences in our lines, here we add three more lines for each ellipse: the minor axis, and the two contact point lines. In checking how far off these are from converging towards the box's own vanishing points, we can see how far off we were from having the ellipse represent a circle in 3D space, and in turn how far off we were from having the plane that encloses it from representing a square.

So where I think you might be somewhat limited in the benefits you're getting from this exercise is that I get the impression that once you've analyzed the results of a previous page and start another, you may not be factoring that analysis in how you choose to construct the boxes for that subsequent page. As a result, their proportions appear to be pretty arbitrary and random throughout, and so the line extensions are merely telling you where your proportions are off - but you're not actually adjusting how you approach the exercise to factor those in. This does, to some degree, share some aspects with what I explained about making conscious decisions vs. relying on your subconscious/instincts, although since the overall steps for how to analyze your results were followed correctly, this section won't require any revisions.

The first section will however, so you'll find them assigned below.

Jumping right in with the structural aspect of the challenge, very nice work. You've clearly taken great care and patience in constructing the body of your wheels, using multiple curves/ellipses with your ellipse guide to flesh them out and leveraging them to control the profile (where some wheels taper along the sides to create the impression of being more inflated, and making them appear as though they would land with more of a bounce than a heavy thud, as determined by your references). Despite the small scale of your ellipse guide forcing the wheels themselves to be quite small (which is something students often struggle with), you approached constructing out each of the spokes and other structures of your rims patiently, avoiding the tendency some students have to panic and become a little sloppier, given the smaller marks required.

When it comes to the textural aspect of this challenge, you definitely fall into what is an entirely normal and expected trap. Being as far removed from Lesson 2, it's very common for students to forget that we discuss specific methodologies that can be used to imply textural information, and so as you've done here, they frequently attempt to approach them based on their own intuition, forgetting to go back and review that material. Rather than emphasizing this in the material, we find that letting students make that mistake provides a much clearer suggestion that one might reflect upon what other aspects of the course may have been allowed to slip through the cracks, so they can be reviewed before finishing up the last lesson. So just to be clear, this isn't remotely abnormal.

So! The main issue here is that you haven't employed implicit markmaking, which features a couple properties:

• It leverages filled shapes of solid black which represent the shadows cast by the textural forms you are placing upon the surface of the object. These textural marks are generally drawn in a two-step process of outlining and designing the intended shadow shape (that shape being what defines the relationship in 3D space between the form casting the shadow and the surface receiving it) in the manner explained in these reminders from Lesson 2's texture section.

• The textural forms themselves are not drawn directly - meaning they're not outlined or shaded, they're implied through the shadows they cast. These shadows will fall upon other surrounding surfaces, which will include other textural forms, and so those other forms will impact the resulting shape of each shadow being cast, but the big distinction is that when you're attempting to convey to the viewer that a particular textural form exists, you're never drawing it, or on it (in the case of applying form shading), you're only ever drawing on the surfaces around it.

We use implicit markmaking because we want to be able to control just how much detail we concentrate in any given area of our illustrations. This is a topic that falls more into composition, which is outside of the scope of this course, but basically it's about being able to guide the viewer's eye and control how they experience the piece, and one tool for doing that is setting up "focal points" - areas with a lot of concentrated contrast and visual complexity, which draws the viewer's eye, allowing you to guide them around a piece from one focal point to the next.

Of course, when a tire has a lot going on, we need a way to convey that complexity without requiring that it also become a focal point. We want to be able to rely on the viewer's brain to fill in the gaps, whilst only providing a small piece of the full detail.

There are plenty of cases where you attempt not to draw the entirety, like 19 and 22, rather than simply filling your wheels up with detail, so you are definitely aware of this - but there's no specific logical process that drives the choices you make when deciding which marks to leave in, and which to leave out, and so there's no underlying pattern that the viewer's brain can pick up on and fill in the gaps.

The reason our approach of implicit markmaking using cast shadows works is because of the nature of cast shadows themselves. As shown in this diagram, depending on how far the form is from the light source, the angle of the light rays will hit the object at shallower angles the farther away they are, resulting in the shadow itself being projected farther. This essentially means that there are circumstances where one form may cast different shadows based on where they're situated in the scene. Combining this with the absence of outlines around each individual textural form creates the expectation in the viewer that a blank area could still contain additional form information and doesn't necessarily imply an absence of texture. Similarly, it also creates the expectation that an area engulfed in shadow might still be hiding extra textural information, and so the viewer's brain will try and extrapolate from what form information is implied (by those shadows that are not so big as to merge together, and not so small as to be invisible or blocked from view).

In regards to the first point, though there are cases where you outline textural forms, you do leverage a filled areas of solid black in cases like number 5. Here however what you've filled in are the side planes of the textural forms you're trying to convey - in effect, you're using form shading (which falls under explicit markmaking), and not conveying the shadows those forms cast. This doesn't benefit from the same dynamic as cast shadows, because rather than resulting in a new shadow whose shape itself conveys the relationship in space between the form casting it and the surface receiving it (which as previously demonstrated can change based on its position in the scene), form shading will fill the entirety of the given plane it is applied to. So in your example, those textural forms' side planes are completely filled, and regardless of where they are, that shape won't change. It might get lighter (if our tools allowed it), since form shading will get lighter/darker based on its orientation in space, but the shape itself will not change.

Anyway! As this is an intended stumbling block for students, we don't assign revisions on that basis - instead, just be sure to go and review the textural section of Lesson 2 to refamiliarize yourself with the concept of implicit markmaking, and consider any other sections of the course that may benefit from another look, before continuing onto Lesson 7.

Holding a pen at a high angle is uncomfortable, that is a perfectly normal experience to have. That said, fineliners will perform best when held at a high angle, and while the tolerances will vary from brand to brand, getting used to holding your pen more upright is definitely beneficial - and more broadly, you should not be relying on how comfortable something feels to assess whether or not it is correct or not. There are lots of things that feel uncomfortable at first due to their unfamiliarity (for example, drawing using the whole arm from the shoulder), but which serve an important purpose, and for which that discomfort fades as familiarity and experience increases.

Ultimately the way official critique is structured is based on resource limitations, so it is required that students complete the entirety of a task to the best of their current ability (to be specific, that means we're not expecting perfect work, just work where the student has made a good faith attempt to go through the instructions carefully, to review them as required, and to give themselves as much time as they need to apply those instructions as well as they are able right now) before we provide them with feedback. The body of work is there to help the person providing feedback to assess what it is you understand, and what it is you may need advice or additional explanations on - it is not a situation where you're being graded.

That said, all students have the option to seek feedback on partial work from the community through our discord chat server, so you are welcome to make use of that if it sets you more at ease. That said, do keep in mind that when it comes to how we feel about our own work, that isn't always going to be based on a clear grasp of what kinds of issues are entirely normal, versus what might suggest something is being misunderstood. For that reason, while our feelings are a valid gauge of whether we need to take a break, they are not a reliable guide in terms of whether we are progressing well or not. So feel your feelings, but don't mistake them for something that can provide you with useful advice on how to approach the course. For that, heed only the instructions as well as you can, and trust that the work you produce will allow whoever does provide you with feedback best identify how to help you continue forward.

Overall this is looking considerably better, both in regards to your form intersections and your contour curves. That said, don't forget to draw through your ellipses two full times before lifting your pen.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete.

That's entirely normal. We make a point not to tell students which direction to draw in, so as not to make assumptions about their handedness.

The box challenge is an exercise that focuses on training specific things - primarily one's ability to estimate convergences. Since the horizon line doesn't contribute to those goals, we don't include it as part of the exercise, in the interest of cutting down on complexity that doesn't work towards those specific established intent.