Hello! Congratz on finishing lesson 2. I'll try my best to give you a solid critique :)

Arrows

Good job on keeping your lines flowy and confident, keep it up! However, a consistent problem I'm noticing is that your arrows often end up distorted on one side, flat when they should be overlapped or messy and unclear. I know how hard it is to adapt your line path while you're making the line, but thankfully that isn't necessary. All of these issues can be solved by proper planning. The first line can be drawn however you want since it's laying the groundwork for the second one. The second line, however, needs to follow the first one or else it won't look right. So when you're making the second line, try to imagine it's exact path, from the start of the arrow to the end of it, leave no questions unanswered. Think of how it has to overlap to avoid distortion and you'll have no trouble when you actually draw it.

As for the 3D aspect, most of your arrows follow along the 2D surface of the paper rather than back into space. You had the right idea on the bottom left arrow on the first page, now it's only a matter of applying the 3D techniques everywhere. There's two things you need to worry about when drawing arrows that flow in 3D space, and those are: 1. Keeping the arrow size consistenly growing and 2. Not being afraid of overlaps. On your other arrows I'm noticing that their size is changing at a negligible rate or not at all. To show you a concrete example of what I mean, here are some arrows that follow both of those principles. I do want to recommend that you try to be more extreme with arrow sizes (going from tiny to so large that they don't fit on the page). Ofc this is not required from the lesson, but I recommend it because I think it's easier to imagine them existing in a 3D space this way.

The shading is mostly fine, I'd still say it could be better. I think the biggest issue is that it feels like you're rushing it. Remember to put the same amount of care into shading as you do in drawing the arrows themselves. Your shading is sometimes distorted, and sometimes too uniform (it needs to go from dense to sparse gradually).

Organic Forms/Sausages

Moving on to your organic forms, I immediately noticed that your sausages are often pinched on one side. Keep your sausages simple as this will solidify their construction and believability as real objects existing in 3D space. If you're having trouble keeping them simple along with drawing confident lines, remember that confident lines don't need to be drawn speedily. You can draw them pretty slowly, as long as you know where you're going with your hand.

As for their rotation in 3D space, I want you to avoid overly complex rotations where they turn multiple times like this one. Your goal should be keeping the contour line rotation as simple as possible and consistent, just like you did here (although if you think about it, the "hole" at the end shouldn't be visible since the contour lines indicate the sausage is turning away from us at that point).

I do wanna emphasize the importance of contour curve degree consistency since that too plays a large role in making the sausages believable. What I mean specifically is, the contour curve degree can either gradually increase, or gradually decrease as it travel across the sausage, it can't fluctuate. The only place where that changes is at the exact point where the sausage starts turning towards us/away from us, a.k.a. the point where the contour curve turns into a line due to perspective. This was kind of hard to explain so feel free to ask for more clarification if it wasn't clear.

Here's a bunch of useful images that may help you understand contour curves in 3D space better. A wonderful user shared it with me in his critique and he got it from the discord server:

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/368871256067670027/426350263884972032/IMG_5773.JPG

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/368871256067670027/426351743190695937/IMG_5775.JPG

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/368871256067670027/426351973990662144/IMG_5774.JPG

Texture Analysis

Your textures are pretty good, here are some notes/things to watch out for:

You should blend the black border with the shadows better, right now it's obvious where the textures stop, especially on the third example. Even though on the first two examples the edge is seemingly perfectly blended, it's still apparent that it's there due to the sudden increase in shadow density. This holds true for the white border on the right as well. To combat this, you should add much more shadow density on the left side and significantly decrease it on the right. I mean it, this exercise is about implying texture and not explicitly drawing it, so actually reducing the amount of texture on the right side and letting the viewer's brain do the work is extremely important.

Other than that, I don't see the references but I do feel like some more information could be extracted from them. Right now you have solid primary and secondary shadows, but tertiary shadows seem to be absent. What I mean by tertiary is just some stuff like scratches, imperfections in the paper and such.

Texture Dissections

The results here vary, I'd say the issues are the same as in texture analysis, on some sausage textures there's not enough texture density variation. On others it's not apparent that the textures are laying on the 3D forms of the sausage so I'd watch out for that. The easiest way to fix that is by imagining a contour line from the sausage ellipse exercise and making the shadow follow it, then using that as a reference point for your other shadows. I know, easier said then done, so here's an example: take a look at how you made the scales skewed and blend into the kiwi. If you were to draw contour lines following the shadows, they'd be skewed as well. The biggest takeaway from this is, try to actively think about the 3D form while drawing and be aware of the contour lines.

To address the density issue here, take a look at the stones/pebbles sausage. You made the transition to pure light too sudden, the light in real life works much more gradually so that's how you should aim to represent it. Also the darkest part of the shadow is still too light. I won't assign you these exercises at the end as I know how tedious they are, but I do strongly encourage you to take on the "25 textures challenge" through the Drawabox course as we learn these concepts slowly over a long period of time.

Another thing I want to briefly mention is that you should avoid using lines as shadows. Here's an alternative. Your usage of lines is the most apparent on the fur sausage. This is the tricky part, our goal is to imply the texture fur with shadow shapes and not draw every single fur strand explicitly. Try drawing most of your fur texture in the transition area (a.k.a. the midtones on a real piece) and keeping the dark and light areas mostly empty. I think you'll find that that produces much more pleasing results.

Form intersections

You show a solid understanding of 3D space here. Some areas (mostly organic forms) have incorrect intersections, here's a useful album that will help you: https://imgur.com/a/6Inx5Bz

I do wanna note that some of your boxes have dramatic foreshortening and you should avoid that. In real life, most objects viewed from a standard distance have very little foreshortening. Also, dramatic foreshortening makes it harder to have all of your forms be consistent throughout the page.

That's really all I have to say about this section, you did good! Some of your spheres look like eggs, so watch out for that.

Organic form intersections

Same as with the sausage exercise, your biggest focus should be on keeping the width of the sausages consistent and not pinched on the edges. Of course this is harder to do in 3D space, but hey, we're here to learn.

As with arrows, the contour lines here indicate that the sausages are going from side to side and not towards/away from us in 3D space. Take a look at what Uncomfortable does with his contour lines in his example, specifically on the two bottom left sausages. When a contour ellipse is facing straight towards us in 3D space, it almost looking like a circle. I think your sausages lack those circle-like ellipses.

One thing I forgot to mention before is that you should view the "hole" on the edge of the sausage as a contour line as well. It's not an arbitrary hole floating in the air, it actually is a small contour ellipse at the very edge of the sausage. That means it can't dramatically differ from the previous contour ellipse, it has to be consistent with it's degree growth as I've mentioned before.

Some of your shadows are not following the surface below it (like the bottom right one on the second image). Making this mistake multiple times in a real painting ruins the illusion of 3D, so it's essential to get it right as often as you can. When in doubt, always imagine (or draw) the contour ellipse going across the surface, that's the path the shadow should take as well. Some of your shadows also feel like they're sticking to the forms (for example all of the ones on the left on the first page) when they should extend further then they do.

Final Thoughts

You're heading towards the right direction, so keep up the hard work! As this lesson serves as the basis for lessons 3-7, I hope you'll forgive me for giving you some homework. I think it'll greatly benefit you if you redo some of these exercises with my critiques in mind as it'll enter into your muscle memory.

The first thing I'll ask of you to read my critique again and make notes of what you think the most important things are. These can be one word bullet points, serving just to remind you of what you should keep in mind. Trust me, it's very worth it to do this, even if it doesn't seem like it. It helps you remember stuff and it will serve as a reminder in future lessons when the new information you gain eventually makes the information from this lesson cloudy in your mind.

After that, I'll ask of you:

• 2 pages of organic arrows. Focus on the aspect of making the arrows flow in 3D space, just like the one's I've drawn in my example.

• 1 page of organic forms with contour lines. Focus on making the sausages simple (no pinched edges) and the consistency of the contour lines.

• 1 page of organic intersections. Focus on applying what you've learned in the previous step here as well.

After that, reply here so I can take a look. Good luck!