Starting with your organic intersections, the forms themselves are generally drawn in such a way that they convey how they're wrapping around the forms beneath them, but the cast shadows are still a concern in two specific ways:

• Firstly, you have a tendency to draw the shadows as though they're being cast on a flat surface, especially on the first page.

• Secondly, you appear to be casting shadows both to the left and to the right - your light source needs to be consistent, and so be sure to first decide where it's coming from, and cast all your shadows accordingly.

Continuing onto your animal constructions, I think by and large you've demonstrated a great deal of growth and improvement as you've moved through each one. There are still a few distinct areas I want to offer some advice on in order to help you continue to develop in the right direction.

The first of these is in regards to your use of additional masses. This is definitely an area that has improved from the beginning of the set, but as is with most growth driven by practice and experience, there are still some issues that come up here and there and that can be solidified with some explanation.

To start, the design of those additional masses is critical. To be more specific, it comes down to where in specific terms we place inward and outward curves, as well as the corners that occur between them. 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.

For that reason - that is, the importance of the form's silhouette - drawing each form's silhouette in its entirety is critical - you do still have a tendency to cut one off where it overlaps another, as we can see with these three masses along the wildebeest's throat

Here I've blocked in some additional masses - note how they wrap around one another, how they pile up, and how they really stretch down along the side to "grip" the animal's existing structure. I also included some notes there about the pelvic mass, so be sure to give them a read.

Another point of note is that when you add these additional masses along your leg structures, you have a tendency to do so with a focus only on the ones that impact the silhouette. These are not the only relevant pieces - in fact, considering the masses that fit in between them helps us better understand how they all fit together. Here I've kind of gone a little overboard (only a little) but it's kind of to show just how we can think about how everything fits together, how every little bump we see in our reference is the result of some larger structure - like an ice berg that's much larger under the surface. In this case, the surface is the silhouette, and the visible portion is the little bump that results, breaking the silhouette.

Moving on from the additional masses, one major point that I feel is pulling a lot of your attention comes down to making things feel accurate. Whether it's approaching texture in more of a decorative manner (focusing on the results you want, rather than thinking about the forms that are present along those surfaces which we talked about back in your Lesson 4 critique), or trying to figure out how to capture areas with a lot going on, like your head structures. In these, you seem to be split between thinking about the forms you're building up, and the need for them to build up in a specific fashion that replicates your reference as closely as possible. And as a result, your focus ends up more stretched and scattered.

The fact of the matter is that while observing the reference carefully, closely, and constantly is very important, it is not so we can replicate it perfectly at all costs. It serves only as a source of information. We look at our reference in order to identify what forms are present there, specifically so we can be better informed when adding another form to our construction. Every drawing we do here is an exercise - it's really just a series of 3D spatial puzzles, and in solving them by starting with a series of simple consistent initial masses, then gradually building up one form at a time.

For example, if we want to go as far as the wrinkles on a rhino's body, we're not drawing the wrinkles we see in the reference - we're looking at the reference to identify each physical form of each wrinkle, and then we draw the shadows they'd cast on their surroundings based on that understanding. It appears that you're still very much letting yourself draw those details purely from observation, when you get past the bulk of your construction.

I think the best way to understand this is to look at some of the newer demos I've done for students. Here's one I just made for the submission before yours, and you can also look at the shrimp/lobster from Lesson 4's informal demos. Note how every form is a separate piece, and they're just added one by one. Sure, these demos don't get into the nitty-gritty of wrinkly skin and whatnot, but that's largely because it's not beneficial for the purposes of this exercise. I think digging into some cases like this will also be beneficial to you, to set aside all of the unnecessary detail and focus only on construction.

Before I finish up, I wanted to quickly talk about head construction. In fact, this is probably the biggest area where you tend to focus too much on direct observation - you do employ the techniques shared in the lesson as a base, but then there's generally a point after which you just start drawing what you see, without necessarily understanding how it breaks down into specific forms.

From what I can see, it does look like you are making use of the informal head construction demo, although I do actually have an additional demo I can offer which should help with this issue because it tries to apply that approach to a rhino's head - specifically one that is as banana-headed as the one you drew. You can find the demo here. Note in particular how every step of the demo is driven by an understanding of spatial relationships. Every form is added as a three dimensional structure - never just one-off lines or strokes. You'll see the differences especially in the mouth.

To that point, while I've basically mentioned this many times already, it's super important to remember that since we're not here to reproduce our reference images, that also means that the techniques we're using here (being an exercise) are not necessarily well suited to things like open mouths. But that's okay - because the goal is not to teach you how to draw every animal possible, but rather to develop your underlying spatial reasoning skills.

So! While you're making good progress, I do want to address the points I've raised here, so I'm going to assign some revisions below.