One thing to keep in mind is that what we're learning here in this course always comes down to the same thing - to develop one's understanding of how simple forms relate to one another in 3D space, and how they can be combined in a way that makes sense and reinforces the illusion that they're all three dimensional, when drawn on a page. So in this sense, none of these lessons are about drawing animals, or plants, or insects - they are using those individual topics as a lens through which to look at the same core problem.

So there will always be more complex challenges - for example, constructing an open mouth - which do employ the same underlying principles, but are outside of the scope of the lesson itself. Just because it falls under the overall theme of "animals" doesn't necessarily mean that it's something I expect you to be able to tackle with what is covered in the lesson material. That certainly doesn't mean you can't try - just that it's understandable that it gave you a fair bit of trouble. Taking it further, it's also not something I'm going to address in this critique, simply because it would be more distracting, keeping us from focusing on the core elements that will be more beneficial to you in the long run.

So! Let's get started.

Looking at your organic intersections, you're drawing these with a good sense of how they slump and sag over one another, demonstrating a good grasp of how gravity applies to each of them. When it comes to the cast shadows, however, I think you still have a ways to go in terms of thinking about how the shadow is cast onto the surface beneath it. Right now your shadows are still kind of clinging to the forms casting them, though I can see you pushing to try to address this issue. Here's an example of what I mean - make sure that when you've got crevasses between your forms, that the shadows go into them, rather than skating across the top.

Continuing onto your animal constructions, there are some mixed results. Overall you're moving in the right direction, and I can see that you're clearly trying to build on top of your structures one phase at a time, working towards more complex results without jumping straight into them right off the bat. This shows a good deal of respect for the constructional approach, and the principles of this course. This shows a great deal in how you handle both your head constructions and your leg constructions.

There are however ways in which you can approach these challenges more effectively. One issue I'm seeing a lot comes down to how you design the additional masses' silhouettes as you add them to your animals' torsos and legs. You tend to fall quite a bit into this sort of "sausage in a hotdog" appearance - which is basically where you introduce artificial corners to the silhouettes of your new masses,as shown here. This makes it seem like you're wrapping the sausage itself in a bun.

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.

So to put it simply, whenever we add any kind of complexity to that silhouette (corners, or inward curves), it has to be in response to the forms that are already present. So first and foremost, we look for what forms are there, what we can leverage. When dealing with the torso, or putting masses onto the animal's back, we can leverage the shoulder and hip masses quite well for this, as shown here.

If however we have no such masses, we can avoid any corners that don't make sense by "twisting" the edge as we wrap around the existing structure, as shown here. You can see that in action in the ant leg demo I shared with you last time.

This matter of 'designing' those additional masses' silhouettes pertains as well to the smaller bumps you added to the left side hippo's back. There because of the way in which they were drawn, they don't really feel as though they're "gripping" the body - instead, they just look like shapes that were pasted on.

Moving on, I also felt that there were some areas where you demonstrated patient, careful observation of your reference image - like on the hippo's head I'd just pointed to (the left one). It's very clear that you took a lot of care in observing your reference as you built it out. Compare that to some of the others that came out feeling noticeably cartoonier, like the tiger I'd been pointing to before, the difference is noticeable. When you take your time in observing your reference constantly (only looking away for long enough to draw a specific form or mark), you tend to avoid your brain's desire to oversimplify things. When you give into your brain's natural tendencies, it'll come out looking more like a cartoon than a more realistic, believable construction.

On the topic of head construction, I noticed that you kind of jumped back and forth between drawing your heads with clear, tight relationships between the various facial elements, and drawing them floating more loosely relative to one another. So for example, that tiger's got eye sockets that float independently of everything else, whereas the hyena on the bottom right of this page has the muzzle wedged snugly and firmly between the eye sockets, and a clearly defined brow ridge across the top. There's some gaps when it comes to the cheeks, but in general this is adhering more closely to the principles covered in the explanation you'll find here. I'm not sure if you've actually read through it - it's linked at the top of the tiger head demo's written material (eventually it'll serve as the more "official" approach, but I'm still working through updating earlier video material and haven't gotten to lesson 5 yet). I strongly recommend you go through it, and strive to apply those principles to your head construction - down to the use of those pentagons for the eye socket shapes.

Taking it a bit further, when you draw the actual eye "shapes" themselves, you'll probably find it easier to think about how to handle the eyes by doing two things:

• Firstly, draw your eye balls much bigger - the eyeballs themselves are only partially visible between the eyelids, but they extend beyond what you can actually see, and are bigger than you'll expect.

• Secondly, draw the two lids separately, as their own additional masses as shown here. This will help you think about how they should be wrapping around that eyeball, rather than just stamping down a flat, symbolic "eye" shape.

Now, I've laid out a number of things for you to work on. There are a few other minor points - like remembering to apply all the elements of the sausage method as explained [in this diagram]() (sometimes you forget to define the joint between the sausage segments with a contour line), but in general I think the pattern is that sometimes you do things more correctly - usually when you invest more time into each individual drawing, and sometimes you don't, leaving yourself with more limited time to observe your reference carefully, to think through how you're applying the principles from the lesson, and to actually draw each individual form you add to your construction to the best of your current ability.

This is in a lot of ways good - because it means that you really just need to commit more time to each drawing. But it does mean that it is up to you to push yourself harder, and to demand more patience of yourself. I'm going to assign some revisions below so you can work on that.