Hello MurcDirty, thank you for responding with your revisions.

it is good to hear that you feel your understanding of 3D improving, and this is apparent in your work, as these pages are much more three dimensional than your initial submission.

I noticed you've commented about observing your references more closely both in your initial submission, and when replying with your revisions. I did not provide any specific advice for observation, as your observation skills appeared stronger than your construction and I wanted you to focus on making your drawings feel solid and 3D first and foremost. As it sounds like it is still something that is giving you concern I'll run through some things that may help.

• Make sure you're observing your reference frequently. As discussed in this video from lesson 2 We want to observe the reference before we put down each mark, to make sure that the mark is derived from the information in the reference, and not what we remember.

• Understanding. If you're looking carefully at your reference but are having a lot of difficulty understanding it and identifying the major forms that are present, don't be afraid to find additional references of the same animal in different positions, or even look at video clips of the animals. This can also be really helpful if parts of your reference are blurry, or the feet are hidden in long grass, you can use a supplementary reference to help add the missing information to your construction. When you tackle "everyday objects" in lesson 6 I strongly recommend drawing objects you actually have, so that you can look at the object from lots of angles and really understand how it exists in 3D space.

• I don't normally go into methods of proportional analysis when providing feedback, as it can switch a student's focus from thinking about drawing forms in 3D space, back to flat shapes on a 2D piece of paper (which is the last thing we want) but you may be interested to take a look at this analysis of a lobster showing some strategies we can take when observing a reference, which can help with planning a construction. Most of the marks on the photo would not actually be drawn as part of the construction, but thinking about "Where is the highest part of the animal?" "What part is lowest?" How much bigger is the body, relative to the leg?" and so-on can help to plan where you will place your various forms and organise space on the page.

Moving on to your constructions, these have improved a great deal. I'll go over the main points covered in the initial critique to highlight what is going well, and offer additional advice if needed.

1- You're respecting the solidity of your forms by avoiding cutting back inside the silhouette of forms you have already drawn, and have made a considerable effort to draw complete new forms with their own fully enclosed silhouettes when you want to build on your constructions, good work. There are a few spots where it looks like you may have added a partial shape, but the intent to construct in 3D is certainly there, as you're no longer modifying the silhouette with one-off lines.

2- Your use of line weight is much more subtle, and it no longer looks like it is being used to correct or hide mistakes, nicely done.

3- You're clearly making an effort to use the sausage method of leg construction, and on most pages you're applying it quite well. I noticed with this construction that some of the sausage forms for the hind leg aren't sticking as closely to the characteristics of simple sausage forms as they could be, and some of the contour curves for the intersections at the joints appear to be missing, but on the whole you're on the right track.

Markmaking is looking better, I can see that you're thinking through each line you want to make, and generally making more use of continuous lines rather than choppy strokes. There is some scope for further improvement, for example if we look at the eye socket of this dog the gaps between your lines make it a bit unclear what shape you were intending to draw, which makes the structure appear less solid.

Speaking of eye sockets, on some of your pages, such as this one you appear to be using rectangles (4 sides) for your eye sockets, which doesn't quite provide the convenient shape to wedge both the base of the muzzle and the forehead against, as shown in these diagrams. Using pentagonal (5 sides) eye sockets will make it easier to wedge the various pieces of your head constructions snugly together, and help to achieve a more solid result.

It is great to see you've made liberal use of additional masses to build onto your constructions, and you appear to have put a fair bit of consideration into how these masses will wrap around the existing structures in 3D space. Something I want you to think about when practising these constructional exercises in future, is making sure that all complexity in your additional masses occurs as a result of interacting with structures that are present in your construction. If you take another look at this diagram I shared previously it shows how we can think of the mass a bit like a ball of clay. Where it is exposed to fresh air, it stays simple and rounded, one continuous outward curve. When we press the mass against the construction and wrap it around the existing forms it will create sharp corners and inward curves, but these curves and corners should be a reaction to the specific forms in your construction, rather than an arbitrary decision.

For example I've circled two arbitrary sharp corners on one of the additional masses on this dog and used an arrow to mark where an additional mass has an inward curve where it is exposed to fresh air and there is nothing present in the construction to press against it. So here I’ve made a couple of edits to the dog construction. We can explain the front sharp corner by including the large elliptical shoulder mass (in blue) which I discussed in my previous round of feedback. The corner towards the rear of the animal can be moved so that it occurs where this additional mass presses up against another mass in your construction. For the inward curve on the underside of the neck, we can build this by layering multiple masses together, allowing each one to stay simpler where it is exposed to fresh air and there is nothing to press against it. Looking at how you've handled the additional masses on the legs in this construction, I'd say that this is an idea that you've already sunk your teeth into.

Okay, your constructions are looking much more solid and 3D, so I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Feel free to move on to the 250 Cylinder Challenge, which is a prerequisite to lesson 6.