Hello Wolfpup, thank you for retaking the photos. These are all clear and none of your work has been cropped off, great stuff.

Starting with your organic forms it looks like you're aiming to stick to the characteristics of simple sausages that are introduced here, though there is a noticeable tendency for the ends to come out uneven, so keep striving to have both ends of the forms the same size, which will help you to keep a consistent width along their length.

You're doing a good job of keeping your linework smooth and confident, both with the forms themselves and the contour curves. I'm happy to see that you're making an effort to shift the degree of your contour curves and are experimenting with a wide variety of degree throughout the set. 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. If you're unsure as to why that is, review the Lesson 1 ellipses video.

I noticed on this form that you'd added a contour ellipse to a tip of the form that faces away from the viewer. Remember that these ellipses are no different from the contour curves, in that they're all just contour lines running along the surface of the form. It's just that when the tip faces the viewer, we can see all the way around the surface, resulting in a full ellipse rather than just a partial curve. But where the end is pointing away from us, there would be no ellipse at all. Take a look at this breakdown of the different ways in which our contour lines can change the way in which the sausage is perceived - note how the contour curves and the ellipses are always consistent, giving the same impression of which ends are facing towards the viewer and which are facing away.

Moving on to your insect constructions, you're doing a good job of starting each construction with simple forms, and building them gradually in stages without attempting to add more complexity than can be supported by the existing structures at any given point. I like that you've been conscientious about "drawing through" your forms and including the parts that are obscured in your references, this is great as it will help you to develop a stronger understanding of how the forms you draw exist in 3D space and connect together with specific relationships.

There are some places where I can see that your spatial reasoning skills are developing, for example, you did a good job of establishing how the tip of the abdomen of this ant connects to the existing ball form in 3D space, so it helps to reinforce the 3D illusion we seek to create with these constructions.

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:

• 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.

• 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've marked on your work here and here some examples in red where it looks like you cut back inside the silhouette of forms you had already drawn. One thing I did notice is that many of the instances of cutting into forms (though not all) came down to the fact that your ellipses would come out a little loose (which is totally normal), and then you'd pick one of the inner edges to serve as the silhouette of the ball form you were constructing. This unfortunately would leave some stray marks outside of its silhouette, which does create some visual issues. Generally it is best to treat the outermost perimeter of the ellipse as the edge of the silhouette, so everything else remains contained within it. This diagram shows which lines to use on a loose ellipse.

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.

When it comes to linework, make sure you're investing as much time as you need to execute each line to the best of your current ability. It looks like you're making use of the ghosting method for those first big ellipses for the head, thorax and abdomen, but perhaps using it less consistently for smaller elements. By going through all the phases of the ghosting method we can ensure that each mark is planned so that it serves a clear purpose, and that it is prepared (with the ghosting motion) which will help to execute the mark with confidence and control. For example if we take a look at this mantis the lines for the triangular form of the head appear to have been redrawn a few times, which starts to make the construction messy and confusing. When adding line weight, we reserve it for clarifying overlaps, and restricting it to localised areas where those overlaps occur, as discussed in this video.

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.

Now, I think that on some of your pages you were working with the sausage method in mind, but ran into difficulty drawing chains of sausage forms. As well as giving yourself enough time to draw each form to the best of your current ability, it may also help to give your constructions more space. You're doing a decent job at using the space on the page, but there are a few constructions where there was some empty space on the page that could have been used by drawing the construction larger, which generally makes drawing the legs less fiddly, and easier to draw from the shoulder.

All right, I think that covers it. As it stands, you're progressing towards building your constructions in 3D but I think the combination of issues I've brought up here would make the next lesson slightly overwhelming. I'm going to be asking you to complete some revisions so we can address these points before moving forward.

• Firstly, I'd like you to practice an exercise that I think will help you with leg construction. I'd like you to draw chains of overlapping sausage forms, and apply a contour line for the intersection at each joint. We're aiming for the characteristics of simple sausage forms and applying contour lines as shown in red on this copy of the sausage method diagram. I'd like you to fill two pages with this exercise, here is a sample of what a filled page might look like.

• Next, please complete 1 drawing done along with the lobster demo and 1 drawing done along with the shrimp demo following each step as closely as you can.

• Finally, 2 pages of insect constructions, using the outer line of your ellipses as the silhouette of the forms you are constructing, applying the methodology from the lobster and shrimp demos, and giving yourself as much time as you need to execute each mark with planning and confidence, using the ghosting method.