Jumping right into the arrows exercise, nice work focusing on drawing the side edges of the arrow structures with confidence, which helps to maintain the illusion that we're looking at a cohesive structure rather than just individual lines on the page. I can also see that you are clearly taking into consideration the application of foreshortening on the positive space (the structure of the arrow itself). That said, I do believe that there's room to factor in its impact on the negative space a bit further as well, as discussed here. We actually released updated video/demos for the first section of Lesson 2 this past weekend, and the updated video for this exercise puts more focus on this (as it's a common issue - so don't worry, you're far from alone in that), so it's worth taking a look at.

One other point I did want to mention before moving on is that your application of hatching is a little rushed. I know that they can seem like a bit of a footnote, and that can make it tempting to put less time into them as we would other strokes, but ultimately we should still be investing as much time as we need to do everything to the best of our ability. When it comes to the application of the ghosting method here (given that we do want to be applying it to all of our freehanded linework throughout this course), you don't have to individually ghost every single mark, because they follow the same trajectory. This means that as long as you maintain a consistent rhythm, you should be able to step down from one to the next, using the execution of the previous one as the preparation for the next. Once you lose that rhythm however, ghosting again is recommended. Additionally, push yourself to have those strokes across the full width span of the ribbon, rather than having them stop at some arbitrary point - being able to have them stretch across from one edge to the other tends to keep things tidier, while arbitrary stopping points will generally look a little sloppier and more inconsistent.

Looking at your organic forms with contour lines,

• Nice work sticking to the characteristics of simple sausages. The main thing we're looking for here is whether or not the student is specifically aiming for them, so that as they continue to practice this exercise, their efforts contribute to improving how consistently those characteristics can be achieved. So, this will of course continue to improve with practice, but you're headed in the right direction.

• Your contour ellipses/curves are drawn decently, although I am seeing signs that you may be executing them more from your wrist/elbow, although it varies (suggesting that you're working at it, but have room for improvement on that front). Also, be sure to draw through all of your ellipses two full times - there were a few that stopped short, which does suggest that there may be room to give yourself more time to ensure that you're making these choices consciously, rather than allowing yourself to slip back into auto-pilot.

• I am seeing consideration to how the degree of your contour lines changes as we look at different points along the sausage, although remember that when we draw the smaller ellipses on the tips of our sausages, that these are contour lines like any other, and therefore their degree must follow the trend of the contour lines preceding them. There are many cases, as we see here, where you tend to draw them with a larger degree as you make them smaller.

• Additionally, remember that in the context of the contour curves, we're only able to see these full ellipses in the cases where the tips of the sausages are turned towards the viewer (making the whole way around visible). In cases like the example I included for the previous point, you're adding them to tips that the other contour curves tell us are turned away from the viewer - there would be no ellipse visible there. You'll find more information on this in this section, and it is also given some time in the updated video for the exercise.

Continuing onto the texture section, one thing to keep in mind is that the concepts we introduce relating to texture rely on skills our students generally don't have right now - because they're the skills this entire course is designed to develop. That is, spatial reasoning. Understanding how the textural forms sit on a given surface, and how they relate to the surfaces around them (which is necessary to design the shadow they would cast) is a matter of understanding 3D spatial relationships. The reason we introduce it here is to provide context and direction for what we'll explore later - similarly to the rotated boxes/organic perspective boxes in Lesson 1 introducing a problem we engage with more thoroughly in the box challenge. Ultimately my concern right now is just how closely you're adhering to the underlying steps and procedure we prescribe (especially those in these reminders).

You definitely hold to this methodology (of outlining/designing shadow shapes first, then filling them in) in some cases (most prominently the crumpled paper) but it is very much mixed in with the use of one-off strokes where you felt these were required, rather than using it to the exclusion of other approaches. This is common, and tends to result in students doing better on the observational side of things, although it does have its downsides and in the context of this course, it's best to stick to that two-step methodology more strictly going forward.

While it's true that there are certainly going to be shadows that are cast that are so small they can't reasonably be executed using our two step methodology, in such cases it's better to actually leave them out, for the following reasons:

• A designed shape, despite not being something we can create quite as small as a one-off stroke, tapers in a more nuanced, delicate fashion, whereas a one-off stroke is more likely to end in a manner that feels more sudden. Thus, the shapes lean better into our goal of creating a gradient that transitions from black to white (and ultimately we have to pick a point for the shadows to drop off altogether anyway, so pushing a little farther with singular strokes isn't strictly necessary).

• Drawing in one-off strokes allows us to lean more into drawing directly from observation (as opposed to observing, understanding the forms that we see as they exist in 3D space, then creating shadows based on that understanding), which can be very tempting as it can allow us to create more visually pleasing things without all of the extra baggage of thinking in 3D. But of course, 3D spatial reasoning is the purpose of this course.

So, just be sure to keep that in mind going forward. It can be pretty gratifying to simply draw what we see directly and paint it on stroke by stroke, but having to think through our choices, design specific shapes, and so on is much more in line with the way in which this course is meant to be used.

Moving onto the form intersections, this exercise serves two main purposes:

• Similarly to the textures, it introduces the problem of the intersection lines themselves, which students are not expected to understand how to apply successfully, but rather just make an attempt at - this will continue to be developed from lessons 3-7, and this exercise will return in the homework in lessons 6 and 7 for additional analysis, and advice where it is deemed to be necessary). The manner in which you're thinking through the relationships between the forms at play here is in line with what we're hoping to see, so that's good. One point I do want to mention however is that when you draw those intersection lines, you tend to lay down quite a few strokes - rather than being a direct breaking of the principles of markmaking that we hold to in this course, you may be starting them off with a singular intentional marks, but attempting to add line weight - keep in mind that we want to stick to applying line weight as discussed here in Lesson 1, where the focus is on clarifying where different lines overlap on the page. This keeps the line weight more localized and focused.

• The other, far more important use of this exercise (at least in the context of this stage in the course) is that it is essentially a combination of everything we've introduced thus far. The principles of linework, the use of the ghosting method, the concepts surrounding ellipses along with their axes/degrees, perspective, foreshortening, convergence, the Y method, and so forth - all of it is present in this exercise. Where we've already confirmed your general grasp of these concepts in isolation in previous exercises, it is in presenting it all together that can really challenge a student's patience and discipline, and so it allows us to catch any issues that might interfere with their ability to continue forward as meaningfully as we intend.

As to this latter point, I think your work is mixed. There are definitely a lot of places where you're applying the techniques and strategies we've introduced, but whether or not you're giving them as much time as you need to do so to the best of your current ability varies. While I'm seeing signs of the use of the ghosting method, I'm not seeing complete use of the Y method (specifically negotiating the corners) . Additionally, I noticed that you skipped out on constructing many of your cylinders around minor axis lines as discussed here, though you did on occasion, and also tended to use them more frequently for your cones. Ultimately this simply means that you may not be as conscious and intentional in the choices you're making, and may need to give yourself more time to make those choices purposefully, and to push back against the temptation to let the auto-pilot kick in.

And as a more minor concern, note that as explained here, you should be avoiding forms that are overly stretched in one dimension.

Finally, your organic intersections are coming along well. You're conveying a strong sense of how these forms slump and sag over one another under the influence of gravity, while maintaining their volumes, and your cast shadows are reinforcing those spatial relationships nicely. Do keep the point I shared about line weight in mind however - like in the intersection lines for the form intersections, on your second page here you're demonstrating a heavier use of them that results in scratchy linework, that should be avoided in the context of this course.

All in all, while you do have a number of things to keep in mind going forward, you are progressing well. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete.