Hello bjpasco, I'll be the teaching assistant handling your lesson 4 critique.

Starting with your organic forms you’re keeping most of your linework fairly smooth and confident in this exercise, good work. You're getting a mixture of some forms which stick to the characteristics of simple sausages that are introduced here, such as the form on the lower right of this page, as well as a few forms which deviate from those simple properties in some way, such as the form at the top right of the same page, which has one end larger than the other. Keep aiming to stick to those simple properties, as closely as you can, as in doing do we capture a sense of solidity for each form.

I noticed with this form that you’d placed a small contour ellipse on the tip of the form that the contour curves tell us is facing away. Remember that these ellipses are no different from the contour curves, in that they're all just contour lines running along the surface of the form. It's just that when the tip faces the viewer, we can see all the way around the surface, resulting in a full ellipse rather than just a partial curve. But where the end is pointing away from us, there would be no ellipse at all. Take a look at this breakdown of the different ways in which our contour lines can change the way in which the sausage is perceived - note how the contour curves and the ellipses are always consistent, giving the same impression of which ends are facing towards the viewer and which are facing away.

Also remember to include a central flow line for your forms in this exercise, a couple of them are missing.

Keep in mind that the degree of your contour lines should be shifting wider as we slide along the sausage form, moving farther away from the viewer. This is also influenced by the way in which the sausages themselves turn in space, but farther = wider is a good rule of thumb to follow. If you're unsure as to why that is, review the Lesson 1 ellipses video.

Moving on to your insect constructions it looks like you’re still making multiple attempts at the same constructions. For example it looks like you submitted 3 attempts at following the wasp demo, and your pairs of moths, grasshoppers, and dragonflies each look like they may be multiple constructions using the same reference. Redrawing the same construction is less helpful to your development as tackling a structure over again without receiving feedback first will not help you find the points in your work that need to be addressed, it's much more likely that you will simply continue to repeat the same mistakes, as such it's best to attempt different structures as that will force you to face different spatial reasoning puzzles and get more out of the exercise.

While this isn’t an issue across the whole set, there are some places where you don’t stick to the principles of markmaking introduced back in lesson 1. If we look at this louse you did a good job of executing the large ellipses of the head, thorax and abdomen with smooth continuous lines, but much of the linework of the ribbing and legs is quite scratchy. Here are some specific examples. Sometimes students will devote less time or effort into marks if they seem small or insignificant, but it is important to continue to use the planning and preparation phases of the ghosting method for every line you freehand in this course. This ensures that each line is the result of a conscious decision, rather than the result of relying on instinct. It is also possible that you might have switched to drawing from the wrist for some of the smaller elements of this construction, but unfortunately drawing from the wrist tends to make lines stiff, and should be reserved for textural marks. Instead, remember to draw from the shoulder for construction lines, to help execute them smoothly.

To that end, something that should help you with your linework is to draw bigger. This particular louse construction is one of the smaller ones in your set, with lots of blank empty space surrounding it that could be used for drawing your construction larger. Doing so gives more space to think through the spatial reasoning puzzles involved with these constructions, as well as making it easier to engage the whole arm.

When following along with the demos it is important to follow each step as closely as you can. Do not cut them short, and do not alter their steps. This will help you understand the construction techniques Uncomfortable uses, so that you can then apply those techniques to your own constructions. For example, none of your various wasp constructions follow the sausage method of leg construction completely or consistently, and this gets perpetuated across many of your own constructions.

You’re doing a good job of starting your constructions with simple solid forms, and I’m happy to see you building things up gradually from simple to complex in stages, without attempting to add more complexity than can be supported by the existing structures at any given step. This is an important principle of construction, and you’re handling it well.

On your final moth construction I did notice that you seemed to be lifting your pen off the page for the sections of the thorax and abdomen that were obscured by other forms. We’d like students to “draw through” and complete their forms as shown in green here as by drawing each form in its entirety we develop a stronger understanding of how they exist in 3D space, and can connect them together with specific relationships.

Once we have those simple forms in place there are a number of different ways we can attempt to develop the construction. Let’s take a minute to talk about differentiating between the actions we can take when interacting with a construction, which fall into two groups:

• Actions in 2D space, where we're just putting lines down on a page, without necessarily considering the specific nature of the relationships between the forms they're meant to represent and the forms that already exist in the scene.

• Actions in 3D space, where we're actually thinking about how each form we draw exists in 3D space, and how it relates to the existing 3D structures already present. We draw them in a manner that actually respects the 3D nature of what's already there, and even reinforces it.

Because we're drawing on a flat piece of paper, we have a lot of freedom to make whatever marks we choose, but many of those marks would contradict the illusion you're trying to create and remind the viewer that they're just looking at a series of lines on a flat piece of paper. In order to avoid this and stick only to the marks that reinforce the illusion we're creating, we can force ourselves to adhere to certain rules as we build up our constructions. Rules that respect the solidity of our construction.

For example - once you've put a form down on the page, do not attempt to alter its silhouette. Its silhouette is just a shape on the page which represents the form we're drawing, but its connection to that form is entirely based on its current shape. If you change that shape, you won't alter the form it represents - you'll just break the connection, leaving yourself with a flat shape. We can see this most easily in this example of what happens when we cut back into the silhouette of a form.

For example, I've marked on your moth in red where it looks like you cut back inside the silhouette of forms you had already drawn. One thing I did notice is that many of the instances of cutting into forms (though not all) came down to the fact that your ellipses would come out a little loose (which is totally normal), and then you'd pick one of the inner edges to serve as the silhouette of the ball form you were constructing. This unfortunately would leave some stray marks outside of its silhouette, which does create some visual issues. Generally it is best to treat the outermost perimeter of the ellipse as the edge of the silhouette, so everything else remains contained within it. This diagram shows which lines to use on a loose ellipse.

It is also possible to alter the silhouette of an existing form by extending it. I have marked in blue on this page some areas where you'd extended off existing forms using partial, flat shapes, not quite providing enough information for us to understand how they actually connect to the existing structure in 3D space.

Instead, when we want to build on our construction or alter something we add new 3D forms to the existing structure. Forms with their own complete silhouettes - and by establishing how those forms either connect or relate to what's already present in our 3D scene. We can do this either by defining the intersection between them with contour lines (like in lesson 2's form intersections exercise), or by wrapping the silhouette of the new form around the existing structure as shown here.

This is all part of understanding that everything we draw is 3D, and therefore needs to be treated as such in order for both you and the viewer to believe in that lie.

You can see this in practice in this beetle horn demo, as well as in this ant head demo. You can also see some good examples of this in the lobster and shrimp demos on the informal demos page. As Uncomfortable has been pushing this concept more recently, it hasn't been fully integrated into the lesson material yet (it will be when the overhaul reaches Lesson 4). Until then, those submitting for official critiques basically get a preview of what is to come.

Something else which can undermine the 3D illusion we seek to create is redrawing lines, if we look at this section of your grasshopper’s leg there are quite a few lines representing the edge of a single form. This gives the viewer an number of possible interpretations of where they think the form is supposed to be, but whichever one they choose, there will always be other lines on the page to contradict that decision, ultimately reminding the viewer (and you) that the drawing is just a series of lines on a flat piece of paper. Give each line as much time as it requires for planning and preparation, and if despite your best efforts you make a mistake with the execution phase, it is usually best to leave the mark alone, as adding another one may make the construction messy or confusing.

The next thing I wanted to talk about is leg construction. It looks like you usually construct your legs by drawing circles for the joints and then connecting the circles together. It's not uncommon for students to be aware of the sausage method as introduced here, but to decide that the legs they're looking at don't actually seem to look like a chain of sausages, so they use some other strategy.

The key to keep in mind here is that the sausage method is not about capturing the legs precisely as they are - it is about laying in a base structure or armature that captures both the solidity and the gestural flow of a limb in equal measure, where the majority of other techniques lean too far to one side, either looking solid and stiff or gestural but flat. Once in place, we can then build on top of this base structure with more additional forms as shown in these examples here, here, and in this ant leg demo and also here on this dog leg demo as this method should be used throughout lesson 5 too.

When it comes to additional line weight, there are some areas where you’re on the right track, using it to help clarify overlaps between your forms, and restricting it to localised areas where those overlaps occur. I thought this was a nice example. Do remember to keep it subtle, line weight should be a whisper, not a shout. Usually a single superimposed stroke will be enough for the viewer’s subconscious to pick up on and understand what you’re trying to convey. This diagram shows how to apply line weight. What we don’t want to see is the sort of line weight that is going on with the wings of this moth Here you seem to have slowly and carefully traced back over the entire silhouette of the wings (which makes your lines wobbly) and it is suuuper thick and distracting, it actually looks like it was applied with an entirely different pen.

Now the last thing I want to discuss is in regards to your approach to the detail phase, once the construction is handled. In effect, you're getting caught up in decorating your drawings (making them more visually interesting and pleasing by whatever means at your disposal - usually pulling information from direct observation and drawing it as you see it), which is not what the texture section of Lesson 2 really describes. Decoration itself is not a clear goal - there's no specific point at which we've added "enough".

What we're doing in this course can be broken into two distinct sections - construction and texture - and they both focus on the same concept. With construction we're communicating to the viewer what they need to know to understand how they might manipulate this object with their hands, were it in front of them. With texture, we're communicating to the viewer what they need to know to understand what it'd feel like to run their fingers over the object's various surfaces. Both of these focus on communicating three dimensional information. Both sections have specific jobs to accomplish, and none of it has to do with making the drawing look nice.

Instead of focusing on decoration, what we draw here comes down to what is actually physically present in our construction, just on a smaller scale. As discussed back in Lesson 2's texture section, we focus on each individual textural form, focusing on them one at a time and using the information present in the reference image to help identify and understand how every such textural form sits in 3D space, and how it relates within that space to its neighbours. Once we understand how the textural form sits in the world, we then design the appropriate shadow shape that it would cast on its surroundings. The shadow shape is important, because it's that specific shape which helps define the relationship between the form casting it, and the surface receiving it.

As a result of this approach, you'll find yourself thinking less about excuses to add more ink, and instead you'll be working in the opposite - trying to get the information across while putting as little ink down as is strictly needed, and using those implicit markmaking techniques from Lesson 2 to help you with that. In particular, these notes are a good section to review, at minimum.

All right, I think that should cover it for now. I think asking you to apply all this information while tackling the next lesson would be an overwhelming task, so I am going to be assigning some revisions for you to tackle the points I’ve called out here before moving on to the next lesson.

Please complete 4 pages of insect constructions.