Hello Azzunoka, I'll be the teaching assistant handling your lesson 5 critique.

Starting with your organic intersections these are coming along well. You demonstrate a good grasp of how these forms slump and sag over one another as they are pulled downwards by gravity, coming to rest in positions where they feel stable and supported. Your cast shadows are applied well to emphasize the relationships between your forms.

In future remember that in this course additional line weight should be restricted to localised areas where overlaps occur, as discussed in this video from lesson 1 rather than being used to reinforce all the sections of the forms you want to assert as visible. This will make it easier to apply the line weight with a single, confident, superimposed stroke.

Moving on to your animal constructions, the set starts decently, but unfortunately goes in the wrong direction. It looks like at some point during the middle of the set you got rather more focused on pursuing goals that were entirely your own, rather than holding to the instructions and principles covered in previous lessons and the course as a whole. To that end, it might be a good time for you to rewatch this video from lesson 0 which explains (among other points you may have forgotten) the importance of following the instructions without modification, and refraining from self critique.

Throughout this course it is pretty important that you continue to stick to the principles and techniques that are covered in previous lessons, so that the individual providing feedback only needs to explain points that you did not understand and avoid repeating information that you already know.

I’ll try to keep this section brief and use bullet points to call out a few mistakes occurring in the later pages that appear to be a lapse in memory, that should be fairly straightforward to correct- as you’ve been demonstrating the ability to do these things correctly in previous work.

• This page has examples of breaking all 3 principles of markmaking, which you should be making every effort to stick to throughout this course. You can review these principles on this page of lesson 1 To help you to achieve this make sure you’re using the ghosting method to full effect for every line, and engaging your whole arm.

• On that same page you’re relying on a faint sketchy underdrawing and cleanup pass. While this is a perfectly valid method for drawing in general, it is not permitted in this course. This approach is more likely to lead to you being sketchy and rough with your lines, altering the silhouettes of existing forms and working in 2D, and goes against why we use ink for these exercises. It is also worth noting that if I can’t see your construction then it defeats the point of submitting the work for official critique. I can’t provide constructive feedback on work I can’t see.

• When drawing ellipses prioritise a smooth even stroke (again, using the ghosting method) and stick to 2-3 circuits around them, with 2 being ideal. For example if we look at the boar at the bottom of this page the cranial ball looks good, but it looks like the ribcage wasn’t drawn through and the pelvis mass is deformed. The shoulder and thigh masses should also be constructed with ellipses as discussed here in the wolf demo but you appear to have drawn arbitrary shapes on this page.

• During your lesson 4 critique I specified in bold that you should stick to the sausage method throughout lesson 5, and responded to your follow-up question with this album breaking down the dog leg demo step by step with different colours to make it clearer for you. You’d made a decent attempt at using the sausage method for your non-hooved quadrupeds so I can see that you did understand the first step of the method. It is honestly disappointing to see that you stopped trying to construct the legs on some of the later pages, including those boars. With the boars it looks like you just drew the leg as you saw it in a single step, relying on direct observation and bypassing thinking about constructing the leg in 3D. Not only does this ignore the information I’d provided previously, it isn’t even following the general construction process introduced back in lesson 2, which you had been employing fairly well in earlier work.

Moving on, there are a few other points to discuss, but these are either new information or areas that suggest a misunderstanding so I’ll explain them in a little more depth.

How we use the space available to us on the page makes a big difference. There are two things that we must give each of our drawings throughout this course in order to get the most out of them. Those two things are space and time. Right now it appears that you are thinking ahead to how many drawings you'd like to fit on a given page. It certainly is admirable, as you clearly want to get more practice in, but in artificially limiting how much space you give a given drawing, you're limiting your brain's capacity for spatial reasoning, while also making it harder to engage your whole arm while drawing. The best approach to use here is to ensure that the first drawing on a given page is given as much room as it requires. Only when that drawing is done should we assess whether there is enough room for another. If there is, we should certainly add it, and reassess once again. If there isn't, it's perfectly okay to have just one drawing on a given page as long as it is making full use of the space available to it.

A concern that stands out to varying degrees across the set is engaging with your drawing in 2D space by modifying the silhouettes of forms that have already been drawn, rather than adding your changes only through the addition of complete, self-enclosed forms with purposefully designed silhouettes that establish the relationships between the forms.

Take a look at this wolverine construction, I've highlighted in blue a number of spots where you drew a one-off mark or partial shape, enclosing the blue area. But this area exists only in two dimensions - there is no clearly defining elements that help the viewer (or you, for that matter) to understand how it is meant to relate to the other 3D elements at play. Thus, it reminds us that we're drawing something flat and two dimensional, and in so doing, reinforces that fact to you as you construct it. Creating believable, solid, three dimensional constructions despite drawing on a flat page requires us to first and foremost convince ourselves of this illusion, this lie we're telling, as discussed here back in Lesson 2. The more our approach reinforces the illusion, the more we make new marks that reinforce it even further. The more our marks break the illusion, the more marks we make that then further break the illusion, for us and for everyone else.

While in this course we're doing everything very explicitly, it's to create such a solid belief and understanding of how the things we draw exist in 3D space, that when we draw them more loosely with sketching and other less explicit approaches, we can still produce marks that fall in line with the idea that this thing we're drawing exists in 3D.

On this image I’ve shown an example of how to attach the tail to the body with a 3D relationship, and how to establish a sold 3D foundation for the foot by drawing a boxy form. Keep in mind that the more complex a form is, the more difficult it is for the viewer (and more importantly, you) to understand how it is supposed to sit in 3D space, so the more likely it is to feel flat. For this reason it helps to draw the feet in stages, rather than jumping straight into all the complexity of individual toes.

On the same image I’ve shown how to apply the second step of the sausage method of leg construction. On this construction you’d done a good job with the sausage forms, but stopped there, not attempting the second or third step from the demo breakdown I provided for you previously.

In lesson 5 we introduce a very effective tool for students to use to flesh out their constructions “in 3D”- additional masses. It is good to seethat you’ve been experimenting with additional masses on some of your constructions, although it can be quite puzzling to figure out exactly how to design their silhouette in a way that feels convincing.

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.

Throughout the set I’m noticing that you tend to only add masses on top of the torso, using a random wobbly blob shape. Take a look at these diagrams which show how we can create the illusion that the mass is wrapping around the existing structures in 3D space, with specific use of sharper corners and inward curves.

You can see an example of how this could apply to an animal construction here where I’ve drawn two purple additional masses along the belly and chest, replacing some of the 2D additions I’d marked with blue earlier. As shown here this tool can also be used along the legs (which is step 3 of the sausage method) building up in 3D along the finer parts of the construction too. I’ve continued to build up with additional masses here as well as using smaller boxy forms to construct the toes.

Another thing to note in regards to these additional masses is that adding contour lines - specifically the kind that run along the surface of a single form, isn't really the tool for the job here. While that approach in the organic forms with contour lines exercise was great for introducing the concept, it does sometimes make students a little too eager to pile them on as a cure-all for making things appear more 3D. Unfortunately, contour lines of this sort only emphasize the solidity that would already be present, either through the simplicity of a form's silhouette, or through other defined spatial relationships, and they also suffer from diminishing returns where a bunch may not be any more impactful than just one. As such, it's always important to ask yourself for every mark you want to put down, "what is the purpose of this mark", "how can I draw this mark so it accomplishes its goal as effectively as possible", and lastly - "are there any other marks that are already accomplishing this goal".

The next thing I wanted to talk about is 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 Uncomfortable is 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 in this informal head demo.

There are a few key points to this approach:

• The specific shape of the eye sockets - 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 eye socket 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 as shown in in the rhino head demo just beneath it on the same page, it can be adapted for a wide array of animals.

The last point I need to mention is an excerpt from the tiger head demo, which you seem to have somehow missed, despite submitting a follow along drawing for that demo.

Lastly, an important note - when drawing eyes, or really anything that appears black in your reference image, DO NOT FILL IT IN WITH SOLID BLACK. I cannot stress this enough - we have an urge to fill in what we see as black, but this is no different from the orange of the tiger's fur. Just because it lines up with the colour we're drawing with does not mean that there is any benefit to filling it in. Instead, you should be treating everything in your subject matter as though it were solid white or grey.

So there’s no need to colour in the markings on the penguin, spots on the hyenas, or the stripes on the lemurs. Not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, just not helpful considering these drawings are all exercises designed to help develop your spatial reasoning skills. The most up to date, and most useful directions for texture are what you’ll find in these reminders from lesson 2.

All right, I think that should cover it. There is (by necessity) a lot of information here, and I expect it may take you quite a bit of time to go through it all, and inspect the various sections of lesson material and diagrams I’ve shared with you. Once you've had chance to do that please complete some revisions to address the various points I have called out here. Additionally, I'd like you to adhere to the following restrictions when approaching these revisions:

• Don't work on more than one construction in a day. You can and should absolutely spread a single construction across multiple sittings or days if that's what you need to do the work to the best of your current ability (taking as much time as you need to construct each form, draw each shape, and execute each mark), but if you happen to just put the finishing touches on one construction, don't start the next one until the following day. This is to encourage you to push yourself to the limits of how much you're able to put into a single construction, and avoid rushing ahead into the next.

• Write down beside each construction the dates of the sessions you spent on it, along with a rough estimate of how much time you spent in that session.

Please complete 6 pages of animal constructions.