While we don't force students to use Imgur, it is best that I explain why we recommend it - it makes it a lot easier to critique students' work when we can scroll through all of the work at a large size all at once. So while you're certainly welcome to continue using google drive to host your work, please do not separate it into different folders. It doesn't make it easier to critique, it makes it quite a bit more difficult and time consuming.

Starting with your organic intersections, these are for the most part reasonably well done, though there are a few things I would like to point out:

• You have a tendency to have some forms floating somewhat randomly in space. Where most of them do a good job of abiding by the laws of gravity (and slumping over one another under its force), some just don't. This demonstration of gravity is an important part of the exercise. I'm assuming you just wanted to squeeze another in there but didn't have the room to give it reasonable support underneath - in this case it's best just to leave them out altogether.

• On the first page of organic intersections, you've got a ball form that you've added on the far left. It appears to occupy some of the same space as the sausage beside it, but neither of them are actually responding to the other's presence. As you add each form to the pile, make sure you're thinking about how it's going to respond to what's already there. Don't just add forms for the sake of populating the scene.

• I noticed that there were some forms that weren't drawn in their entirety. I think that you drew most of them fully, but there were a few - likely ones added towards the end - where you slipped up.

I think these all really come from the same issue - after a point, you end up focusing more on just adding more forms. That's certainly a respectable endeavor, but the rules of the exercise don't stop applying. You actually had plenty of solid forms doing their job already, so there's no shame in just calling it done there.

Continuing onto your animal constructions, I think your results are somewhat mixed. I can see a lot of cases where you're applying a number of the principles and concepts from the lesson, and doing so fairly well, but there are some issues that get in the way.

One of these simply comes down to your choice of references. Remember above all else: Drawabox is not a course whose focus is to teach you how to draw animals, or insects, or plants, or vehicles. Drawabox is a course that focuses on a single kind of problem, and looks at it from many different angles, using each of these topics as a lens. That single problem is understanding how these kinds of structures are made up of simple forms, all combined together, with their relationships in space clearly defined, ultimately creating a solid and believable result.

This can be done with all objects in the world, but there are some kinds of reference images that will make this considerably more difficult. For example, you've got quite a few studies here of animals with their mouths open - some wolves, a lion, a bear, etc. This in turn requires you to go way beyond the concepts covered in the lesson, where we break the head construction into a few simple forms, establishing how they connect to one another, and so on. Now you have to worry about an open jaw, teeth, etc. While the same principles certainly can apply, you're basically trying to jump over a wall before you're able to walk.

This definitely isn't your fault, and it can (and will, once my overhaul of the course reaches this lesson) be addressed more directly in the course material. Regardless, it is worth stating this plainly: it is always going to be more valuable to focus on simpler references that align more closely to the kinds of challenges laid out in the demonstrations, than to seek out more complicated problems and try to solve them on your own. The purpose of this homework is really just for you to show that you understand what the lesson itself teaches, not to show that you can go far beyond it.

That's not to say you didn't definitely have some success with those more complex head constructions. The roaring bear head study, for instance, has its weaknesses but I felt that the way you laid out the muzzle and the open mouth, and especially that pronounced brow ridge came out really nicely and conveyed a strong sense of how the whole structure was clearly three dimensional. Some of your smaller individual wolf head studies coming out nicely as well.

In other cases however, your results did come out more warped, with the larger open-mouthed wolf having its muzzle sitting quite off-center. I also noticed a few critical issues:

• You don't appear to be drawing through any of your ellipses. You may have forgotten, but back in Lesson 1 I explain that you should be drawing around the elliptical shape two full times before lifting your pen for all the ellipses you freehand throughout this course.

• If you only watched the video from the demonstrations and didn't do the corresponding reading, you may have missed this - but at the beginning of the tiger head demo I explain that the approach is outdated and will be replaced (in the overhaul I referenced above). There I link to this head construction explanation. I don't see that approach reflected in your work, so you may have missed it. It goes over how all of the components of the head must be wedged together, with clearly defined relationships in 3D space, and how that specific eye socket shape allows us to more easily create a space for the muzzle to be wedged in between, along with a flat surface across the top for the brow ridge.

Moving away from head construction, I did feel that your camel construction came along quite nicely, and I felt you stuck to building things up through the addition of simple forms. Compare that to how in the drawing of the howling wolf, you ended up putting considerably less focus on the initial ribcage and pelvis masses, and instead drew the torso as a vastly more complex silhouette (incorporating the protruding chest and tucked in tummy). I did notice some consistency as well, both in the camel and in many of your other drawings where you'll define some of the joint in your legs' sausage segments with contour lines, but not others. This step is important because it allows us to better understand how those forms relate to one another in 3D space, and leaving them out can easily result in the viewer interpreting them as flat shapes.

Continuing on, I wanted to talk a little about how you're drawing your additional masses. In these, you are moving in the right direction, but there are still some shortcomings.

Take a look at what I've noted on your running wolf:

• Most importantly, while I'm glad you're keeping those additional masses quite simple, we do need to think about where we should strategically add complexity to those masses to demonstrate how they wrap around the structure to which they're attaching. Note how I'm wrapping it around the shoulder mass in the front one, and around the hip mass for the back.

• Along the leg, you drew some partial, flat shapes - that is, forms that aren't fully enclosed, and instead use part of the existing structure to produce fully closed silhouettes. Each of our forms need to be fully enclosed on their own, as shown along the back legs.

• If you happen to need to build up forms that pile on top of one another, make sure you establish how the overlap each other in 3D space.

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.

Now the last thing I wanted to call out is simply related to the amount of time you're putting into each drawing - and more importantly, just how much time you're putting into the actual observation of your reference images. In some cases, you're definitely doing a great job, but the fact that you did pick out a lot of particularly challenging ones which definitely needed a lot more time to just determine what simple forms are at play. Remember above all else that we need to be spending most of our time just observing, and it's not a matter of observing a lot up-front, then going to draw for a while. We need to be observing constantly, only looking away for long enough to draw a specific form or mark before looking back. Otherwise we risk relying more on memory, and due to our brain's natural inclination to throw away critical information and simplify things, relying on memory is never good. This definitely resulted in a lot of oversimplification in many drawings.

I also noticed that these signs seemed to come up more often in drawings where you built up more detail. It's pretty common for students to get somewhat distracted in the construction phase if they know they're going to build up more interesting detail/texture later on.

As you might expect, I am definitely going to be assigning some revisions, and you'll find them below. As you work on these revisions, I want you to adhere to the following restrictions:

• No more open-mouthed constructions. Focus on full-bodies, and really try to aim for simpler things. No need to try anything too challenging - we just want to see that you understand the principles covered in the lesson.

• Follow the head construction principles explained here.

• Leave out all texture/detail. For the most part, that means no fur.

• Don't try to complete more than one drawing in a single day. It's not uncommon for students to be more inclined to rush a single drawing if they know they're going to be several in the same sitting. It is completely normal for a drawing to take a whole day, or to require multiple sittings across multiple days. There is nothing saying you should be finished your drawing by the time you're done for the day. The only thing that determines how long a drawing should take is its own complexity - you give it, and each individual mark, as much time as they require to be executed to the best of your current ability.