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

Starting with your organic forms keep in mind that you should be aiming towards the characteristics of simple sausages that are introduced here. Many of these are reasonably close, but there are cases like the two forms on the lower left of this page which continually swell through their midsections like ellipses, which is noted as something to avoid in the "none of these" section.

Most of your contour curves are coming along well. I noticed the curves on the form at the top of this image appeared unusually wobbly, make sure you're using the ghosting method for each one, and prioritising a smooth confident stroke over accuracy.

The form below has lovely smooth contour curves, though as noted with the adjustments made on your work, you could pay more attention to their alignment. We're aiming to have these curves cut into two symmetrical halves by the central flow line. Remember you are encouraged to rotate your page to find the easiest angle to execute your lines.

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 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 lets kick things off by addressing your query:

Hey, I know these aren't necessarily meant to look nice, but I feel like I turned some of these clean and slick pictures into a busy mess of line when trying to convey the construction and drawing through. Can you give me some points on when not to draw through and how to keep the structure coherent?

If a form is partially visible in the reference we strongly encourage you to draw it in its entirety, rather than cutting it off where it becomes obscured. By pushing yourself into drawing the entire forms and establishing how they connect together in 3D space you will develop your spatial reasoning skills, as well as building constructions that maintain their solidity more effectively. If a form is completely hidden in the reference you don't need to draw it. So with that in mind, if we look at this page as an example, the stick bug appears more three dimensional than the dung beetle, mostly due to drawing through your forms. You can read more about why we have all these extra lines in these constructions in this section.

As for how to keep things coherent, once you have your construction in place you can clarify which forms are in front by selectively applying additional line weight to overlaps, and restricting it to localised areas where those overlaps occur. You can read more about this in this section.

Last time I went too hard on line weight, so I made sure not to do that this time, but let me know if this is OK or too little. Or still too much xD, thanks!

For the most part your additional line weight is appropriate. it is certainly more subtle than the example highlighted in your lesson 3 feedback. Good work. There are a few places where you seem to be using a heavier line to redraw the silhouette of entire forms, for example on the front legs of this mantis. Instead try to maintain a more consistent line thickness throughout the various stages of construction and only add the parts that change.

So, on the whole, you're following the construction methods shown in the lesson fairly well. You're starting with simple solid volumes and building things up gradually piece by piece. Some of these constructions demonstrate a good understanding of how the forms you draw exist, not as flat shapes on the paper, but as forms fitting together in 3D space. Your dragonfly for example, has a clear sense of the head being in front of the thorax, and the abdomen receding in space.

I do have some points that should help you get more out of these constructional exercises in the future.

The first of these relates to differentiating between the actions we can take when interacting with a construction, which fall into two groups:

1 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.

2 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 of these constructions. For example, I've marked on this page in red where it looks like you cut back inside the silhouette of forms you had already drawn. On the same image I marked in blue 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.

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 tried out a few different strategies for constructing legs. 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, here, and in this ant leg demo and also here on this dog leg demo as this method should be used throughout lesson 5 too.

The last point I want to cover is a reminder to reserve areas of solid black for cast shadows only.

On the bottom sections of the legs of this mantis it looks like the black areas are either a response to a change in coloration of the insect, or an attempt to cover up a perceived mistake.

On this ant a significant portion of the black areas are form shadows. Form shadows occur where the surface of the form faces away from the light source. Cast shadows on the other hand do not cling to the silhouette of a form, and instead are cast onto a different surface. I suggest you review this video where Uncomfortable explains the difference between form shadows and cast shadows.

Conclusion

Overall your work is developing well and you've shown that you understand this lesson. I've brought up a few things to work on, but they can all continue to be addressed into the next lesson, so I'll go ahead and mark this one as complete. Please make sure to refer to this critique and the various diagrams and demos I've shared here as you work through the next lesson, they should help you to tackle your animal constructions.