Starting with your organic intersections, one thing I noticed on your second page was that you may not necessarily be thinking about how the pile as a whole sits in 3D space. I say this because of how the long sausage in the middle of the pile, based on those below it, is effectively floating there in space (aside from where it's slightly supported on the far left). There's essentially nothing but empty space underneath its right side, which tells the viewer that the pile itself is not stable, and thus not really abiding by a consistent gravity. When doing this exercise in the future, it's important that you always think about how you're building up a stable pile, working from bottom up. With each sausage, ask yourself whether it's being supported in space, or if it's floating.

Aside from that glaring issue however, you're doing quite well in establishing how the sausages rest atop one another and how they wrap around the structures beneath them.

Continuing onto your animal constructions, I can see that as a whole you're making good headway, although there are a few points I want to raise in order to ensure that you're getting the most out of these constructional drawing exercises.

Firstly, while I didn't see too much of this elsewhere, this frisian horse construction has you altering a lot of the silhouettes of existing forms in 2D space. This was specifically something discussed in your Lesson 4 feedback, and while overall I'm pleased to see this was the only instance that had major issues with this (though there are little instances of it elsewhere), it is something you'll want to review again to ensure you don't accidentally slip back into these habits in the future.

Secondly - and to a similar point - while you certainly are using the sausage method in a variety of places throughout your constructions, there are some places where you either use a different approach altogether (like on this elephant), and places where you apply it partially, like on this stag where the further down the leg you go, the less sausage-like the segments become.

To put it simply, it seems that while you understand and try to apply the points I raised before, you are prone to getting a little careless and losing focus on those elements.

Continuing on, I am pleased to see that you are making extensive use of additional masses throughout your constructions, although the way in which you approach these can be improved. 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.

Based on what I'm seeing, it does look like you're thinking somewhat about how those masses are designed, although applying what I've noted above would look more like this. Note that each design is very intentional in the placement of inward curves, outward curves, sharp corners and "softer" corners. Also note that I specifically stretch those masses down along the side to find opportunities to press them against other structures - like the big shoulder and hip masses - as this helps us to achieve a more grounded, solid appearance to the structure as a whole.

I also noted that this stag had two major masses along its spine, but they kind of overlapped one another in 2D space. Here, I've intentionally allowed masses to overlap in 3D space - meaning, as soon as we add one, it becomes part of the "existing structure" and so any following masses must wrap around its surface, rather than passing through it.

When it comes to your animals' legs, I noticed that you often neglected to build upon the basic sausage (or sausage-like) structures with additional masses. You did it somewhat on the horses, but there you focused primarily on where the basic silhouette was broken with bumps or protrusions, and elsewhere you didn't really delve much into building atop those leg structures. As shown here in another student's work, there's a lot of value in not only thinking about the major bumps on the silhouette, but also in figuring out how all the different internal masses fit together. Just like extending the masses along the back to press up against the shoulder and hip masses, this also helps to establish how everything fits together in a solid, grounded 3D puzzle.

And as a side note, this diagram (also from another student's work) should help you with building out your animals' feet.

Lastly, I wanted to talk a bit about 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 I'm 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 on the informal demos page.

There are a few key points to this approach:

• The specific shape of the eyesockets - 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 eyesocket 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 with a bit of finagling it can still apply pretty well. To demonstrate this for another student, I found the most banana-headed rhinoceros I could, and threw together this demo.

I'm going to assign some revisions to give you the opportunity to apply the points I've raised thus far, and to apply the points I raised in Lesson 4 more consistently. You'll find them listed below.