Hello I’ll be handling the critique for your lesson 5 homework.

Organic Intersections

-Starting by the organic intersections, your sausages are beginning to wrap around each other in a believable way and I can see that you have made an effort to keep them simple and easy to work with, although the sausage at the top on the first page clearly bulges toward the end, do your best to keep them well shaped. When it comes to the cast shadows I think you are pushing them far enough, but remember to use them as contour lines, they help to describe the curvature of the surface they are falling on, so take more time to design their shape and really try to imagine as if you were carving your pen along the surface of the sausage to get those bits of nuance that help to describe how each form exists in space

Animals

-Your constructions are turning out well and I like to see that you have employed the construction method well, making a lot of smaller decisions and steps rather than trying to capture a lot of things at once

-The first thing I want to call out is that whenever blocking out your major masses (head, thorax and pelvis) you seem to be drawing them as loose ellipses, keep in mind that you want to be confident in your belief that these form exist in space, try to add a contour line to describe their curvature and convey their volume.

-I like to see that you have used additional masses a good deal, layering them on the initial structure and on top of each other too, but right now you seem to be focusing solely on the ones that directly affect the silhouette, and there is not a lot of consideration for the forms that don’t impact it. You can see an example here on the dog’s leg demo, as you can see, there's blocked out masses along the masses including the one fitting in between them all, even though it doesn't influence the silhouette. Thinking about it this way will help you further push the value of constructional exercises and puzzles.

It is good that you are looking for opportunities to push those masses against other forms like the shoulders, which makes your construction more believable and gives you opportunities to use inward curves and sharp edges.

–You have used the leg’s construction method correctly, and you have been able to draw the sausages in a way that captures both the natural flow and solidity of these limbs in equal measure, the only thing I want to direct your attention to is the way you are drawing the feet, instead of drawing a simple blob you can block them out with boxy forms, this will allow you to define the different existing planes explicitly, once that structure is in place you can start to add additional details by following the planes of the existing structure. You can see this process here.

-Lastly I want to address head construction, you are moving in the right direction here. Right now it seems that you are using straight edges to cut into the cranial mass and define the different planes. I would suggest that you avoid drawing straights and instead give them a slight curve so that it looks more natural. I also noticed that you are drawing the eye socket as a hexagon, I don’t really think this is a big mistake, but it is better to draw a pentagon pointing downwards, this will give you a wedge for the muzzle to fit into and a flat top for the forehead and brow ridge. As always, keep looking for opportunities to push these exercises further, I can see that you have cut into the muzzle to capture the mouth of your animals, instead you can try to break into even more boxy forms. Be sure to start small and build up slowly with small, individual pieces and look back at your reference to see what it is you're trying to capture. Here's an example from the banana-headed rhinoceros . We're still starting with the same components but get into some unique case driven actions towards the end, especially the extra bulk in the back of the head.

Okay that should be about everything I wanted to cover, keep up the good work I’ll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete.