Hello Scryfox, I'll be the teaching assistant handling your lesson 5 critique.

Starting with your organic intersections you're doing a pretty good job of piling your forms up so the feel stable and supported, like we could walk away from the piles and nothing would topple off.

Your forms are starting to feel volumetric, and I have a tip that should help you to get a bit more out of this exercise in future. Back in your lesson 2 feedback, Tofu asked you to draw through your forms when practicing this exercise, as it will help you to develop a stronger understanding of how these forms exist in 3D space. Perhaps you did not understand what he meant, so on this page I've drawn through some of your forms for you, in blue.

On the same image I'd noted an example of a form that is bulging and narrowing along its length, starting to get a little bit too complex.

The last point to note on that image is just a little reminder to draw around all your ellipses two full times before lifting your pen off the page, which is something you usually do pretty well.

Moving on to your animal constructions, there are places where your constructions are feeling solid and 3D, as well as a few places where you'd hopped back into working in 2D by drawing lines on a flat piece of paper, rather than 3D forms that fit together like a puzzle. For example, if we take a look at the head construction on this page it looks like you'd constructed the cranial ball, then proceeded to "draw the rest of the owl" by drawing the outline of the face as you observed it in the reference. There isn't much construction going on here, so we're left with no way of knowing how the lines of the face are supposed to connect to the underlying ball structure in 3D space, and the result feels very flat. Fortunately this issue isn't present across the whole set, so I'll focus most of the advice in this critique on the drawings that took a more constructional approach.

Continuing with the topic of head construction, lesson 5 has a lot of different strategies for constructing heads, between the various demos. Given how the course has developed, and how Uncomfortable is finding new, more effective ways for students to tackle certain problems. So not all the approaches shown are equal, but they do have their uses. As it stands, as explained at the top of the tiger demo page (here), the current approach that is the most generally useful, as well as the most meaningful in terms of these drawings all being exercises in spatial reasoning, is what you'll find here in this informal head demo.

There are a few key points to this approach:

• The specific shape of the eye sockets - the specific pentagonal shape allows for a nice wedge in which the muzzle can fit in between the sockets, as well as a flat edge across which we can lay the forehead area.

• This approach focuses heavily on everything fitting together - no arbitrary gaps or floating elements. This allows us to ensure all of the different pieces feel grounded against one another, like a three dimensional puzzle.

• We have to be mindful of how the marks we make are cuts along the curving surface of the cranial ball - working in individual strokes like this (rather than, say, drawing the eye socket with an ellipse) helps a lot in reinforcing this idea of engaging with a 3D structure.

Try your best to employ this method when doing constructional drawing exercises using animals in the future, as closely as you can. Sometimes it seems like it's not a good fit for certain heads, but as shown in in this rhino head demo it can be adapted for a wide array of animals. Here are a couple of notes for how we could apply this method to one of your deer constructions.

The next point to talk about is leg construction. I'm happy to see that you've stuck with the sausage method here, and I've popped a couple of notes onto your deer for ways you could be adhering to the specifics of the sausage method more closely.

• Remember to keep the sausage forms simple, as their simplicity helps them to feel solid and 3D. I noted in red a form that was straying from the characteristics of a simple sausage form, and in green an example of a really good sausage form.

• Most of your leg constructions are missing the contour curve at each joint. These little curves might seem insignificant, but they are a very effective tool for defining how the sausage forms connect together and reinforcing the solidity of the construction, so be sure to remember them in future.

• You're somewhat prone to refining your leg structures with single lines, rather than building on to them with complete 3D forms and establishing how the new forms wrap around the existing structure. You can find the difference illustrated in these diagrams which I shared with you in your lesson 4 critique. Here is how we could apply this to your deer's legs.

• You've done an excellent job of using an ellipse to define where the limbs will connect to the sides of the body. Something that can be quite helpful is to imagine these ellipses as bulky masses in their own right (which we usually see in these areas due to some of the bulky muscles that help the animal to walk) and being more generous with their size. These protruding shoulder and thigh masses can be very useful for helping to anchor additional masses to the construction later.

Speaking of additional masses, I'm happy to see you experimenting with them on many of your constructions, exploring how to build onto your simple balls and sausage forms in 3D, to arrive at a more characteristic representation of the animal in question. It certainly can be tricky to figure out how to design the silhouette of an additional mass so that it feels solid and believable.

One thing that helps with the shape here is to think about how the mass would behave when existing first in the void of empty space, on its own. It all comes down to the silhouette of the mass - here, with nothing else to touch it, our mass would exist like a soft ball of meat or clay, made up only of outward curves. A simple circle for a silhouette.

Then, as it presses against an existing structure, the silhouette starts to get more complex. It forms inward curves wherever it makes contact, responding directly to the forms that are present. The silhouette is never random, of course - always changing in response to clear, defined structure. You can see this demonstrated in this diagram.

With this behaviour in mind I've made a few edits to the additional masses on your deer. There are 3 points to note here, firstly I'm wrapping the masses around the underlying structures. Notice for example with the mass under the belly, how I've pulled the mass up from the outer edge of the torso sausage, around the side of the body, giving the mass a firmer grip on the construction. Second, I'm making use of the protruding shoulder and thigh masses, notice where the additional masses meet the blue ellipses I added earlier, they form inward curves, becoming interlocked. Thirdly, the purple mass was added last, and wraps around the red masses in 3D space. I noticed sometimes where you have multiple masses you'll cut them off where they pass behind one another. Where they overlap, allow them to do so in 3D, and give each mass its own complete, fully enclosed silhouette.

The last point I wanted to mention is a quick bonus for constructing paws. I'd like you to take a look at these notes on foot construction where Uncomfortable shows how to introduce structure to the foot by drawing a boxy form- that is, forms whose corners are defined in such a way that they imply the distinction between the different planes within its silhouette, without necessarily having to define those edges themselves - to lay down a structure that reads as being solid and three dimensional. Then we can use similarly boxy forms to attach toes.

Okay, I think that should cover it. I hope this advice will help you when practicing these constructional exercises in future. For now though, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Your next step is the 250 Cylinder Challenge, which is a prerequisite for lesson 6. Best of luck.