3:09 AM, Tuesday December 15th 2020
Starting out with your organic intersections, I can definitely see that you're struggling a little when it comes to actually having your cast shadows fall on the surface of the forms beneath, so that's definitely something you're going to want to dedicate a little more time to figuring out. One key necessity is to think about where your light source actually is, and to ensure that you're maintaining a consistent relationship with it. To have shadows cast on both sides of a form wouldn't make sense, and you're ending up in that situation quite a bit. Additionally, don't add your cast shadows until the very end, and really think about just how each surface exists in 3D space, and how those shadows are being cast upon them. Even the ground plane is its own surface, and all are receptive of shadows.
Continuing onto your animal constructions, there's definitely good progress here, and I can see a lot of effort being invested into figuring out these different drawings. There are some key issues that should help you progress a fair bit further of course, so I'll focus on pointing those out.
Above all else, the key shortcoming here is that you're jumping between working in two dimensions and working in three dimensions very freely. Constructional drawing is all about building things up by introducing new, solid, complete forms to our structure, establishing how each one relates to that which already exists, in 3D space. It is however very easy for us to simply draw some lines, or a shape, or to create a shape that relies on existing lines to be fully enclosed. We're drawing, after all, and everything that goes onto the page is within our control.
And that's our greatest weakness. The fact that we can draw whatever marks we wish, and that the vast majority of these marks would serve to undermine the illusion we're trying to create. That is precisely why thinking so much about how each thing we add is itself a solid, complete form, is so important. We are imposing external, made-up rules in order to keep the illusion consistent, and avoid undermining the viewer's suspension of disbelief.
Now, you have been working in three dimensions, but you've also just as often tossed them aside to take a little shortcut here and there, to bridge the gap between two forms without constructing a whole new form. And those tempting shortcuts are what we need to avoid. For example, I've taken one of your foxes and marked out where you opted to just draw a basic line instead of a form.
Now, there are plenty of instances where you do use those additional masses more correctly, so let's look at how we can employ them even better. The thing about these masses is that when they exist in the void on their own, they're basically balls of soft, squishy meat. They maintain their simplest possible form, because they're not being influenced by anything external - they're just balls, made up entirely of outward curves. When we press them down upon some existing structure however, they start to get more complex on the sides making contact. They develop inward curves, and corners as shown in this diagram. This is how we need to think about these additional masses.
The key to keep in mind is that every "inward" curve occurs in response to some actual, physical form that is pressing against our mass. That means that we can't just draw the silhouette in an arbitrary manner - we have to know precisely the nature of the form that's pressing against it, and even define those forms separately. You can actually see a lot of this in the ant leg and dog leg I shared in my critique of your lesson 4 work. Everything fits together, everything is influenced by elements that, whether they're drawn explicitly or not, have been thought through as well. I of course would encourage you to draw all those forms, however, just to make sure you're fully aware of how they exist on the body.
Another point I'm noticing is that while you're making attempts to use the sausage method for constructing your legs, note that you are frequently missing key aspects of the technique - from not using proper simple sausages (often using stretched ellipses instead) to not reinforcing the joint between sausage segments with a contour line. Be sure to look at this diagram again, as all these issues are noted there.
Thirdly, there are definitely issues in how you approach constructing heads. You're moving in the right direction in a number of places, trying to fit the eye sockets, muzzle, etc. together, but there is a lot of improvement that can be had. This is actually more an issue with the lesson's core demos on this topic being insufficient - so more recently I've added this brief explanation on how to think about head construction to address it until I'm able to revisit the lesson as a whole. Be sure to read through the text alongside it.
One last, relatively minor point I wanted to mention was that in your rhino you got caught up in the form shading of the underbelly. In the future, leave that out - remember that back in lesson 2 we talk about how this course will not be getting into any shading.
Now, I'll leave you to apply the points I've raised above with some revisions, and we'll look at what you come back with.
Next Steps:
Please submit the following:
4 pages of animal constructions. Take your time with each one - don't tackle more than one drawing in a single day, and make sure that you really focus on spending as much time as you reasonably can on each. The "one per day" isn't a deadline - if you feel you need to spend more than a day on a single drawing, then you are encouraged to do so. Spend that time planning out each and every mark you make, executing them with confidence, etc.