Hello there.
Taking on your previous critiques (mostly about treating everything as a 3d shape on its own), i have tried to apply it whenever possible.
The biggest challenge of this lesson was definitely the hooves, i tried to view it as a 3d object, but most of the time it still came out flat. Even with the heads i kina got the gist of it after a few constructions.
I'll let you take it from here.
Thanks
Starting with your organic intersections, it's notable that your second page is considerably stronger than your first. In the first page, the way in which you're asserting the orientation of each form - so for example, here and here, where you've drawn your contour lines such that the upper end is facing towards the viewer - gives the impression of a very unstable pile of sausages. Those contour lines, along with the given sausages' relationship with the other forms around them, tell us that these sausages are pretty upright, and in no way solidly grounded, giving the impression that in the next moment, they're about to all tumble away. You'll definitely want to take more time to think through the manner in which you're building up these piles of sausages, to make them feel more solid and give the impression that they all exist under the force of the same gravity. This means thinking about how each form is meant to relate to those around it as you draw it, and to maintain that impression as you add contour lines.
Additionally, I'm seeing inconsistencies in where you choose to cast shadows, which again suggests that you may not be giving yourself enough time to think through each form's relationship with your light source, as shown here. I'm also noticing a tendency to half draw cast shadows - to have them fall on one surface, but when another surface should then be catching them, you neglect to draw it there.
Continuing onto your animal constructions, I can see that you have indeed make a concerted effort to focus heavily on applying those principles I shared in my critique of your Lesson 4 work. There are a few little places where you've deviated from them despite your best efforts, but all in all, I'm pleased with the fact that you've clearly tried to address those issues.
That said, I should mention that it is not entirely uncommon that when a student comes to realize one area may be lacking in one regard, they allocate time to that area by pulling it away from another. In your case, I can definitely see that one area that has as a result suffered is your application - you end up not putting nearly enough time into the observation of your animals. As a result, you've got really solid forms for the most part, and you're designing the silhouettes of those additional masses quite well, but while I don't have access to your reference images, I can definitely see that you're making the decisions of what form to draw next, and the nature of that form based on what you recall seeing in your reference rather than direct observation.
So, the first major issue is simply that you need to be investing more time into the observation of your animals, but without pulling that time from other areas. It's entirely normal for a drawing to require multiple sittings, so don't feel any compulsion that you need to finish a given drawing before getting up. And of course, review these notes on observation.
Continuing on, as I said the manner in which you're designing the silhouettes of your additional masses is coming along great for the most part (and definitely demonstrates that you can indeed manage that work with the organic intersections far better than you did, since they're effectively the same kind of problem), but I do have a couple suggestions for you to keep in mind:
As shown here, look for opportunities where you can elongate your masses to both further "grip" the sides of the animal, and to take advantage of other masses that you can actually press the one you're drawing against, as I did with against the hip/shoulder masses. Any opportunity we have to press our additional masses against additional structures helps to make the whole thing feel more grounded, like pieces of a puzzle all fitting together.
When adding masses to your legs, don't just focus on the ones that impact the silhouette of the form. Think more generally as though you're building up every aspect of this structure, and consider those masses that fit in between as well, as shown here on another student's work. Like the previous point, this will give you ample opportunities to consider how your different additional masses press up against one another, giving you a better shot at making everything feel grounded.
In regards to the feet, I actually do have some advice to offer there, to make them feel more three dimensional. The key here is the use of boxy forms - that is, forms with clear corners in the silhouette that helps to imply the internal distinction between planes. Rather than explaining it further, I've got these notes here on another studen'ts work to help illustrate the concept. This can be used for hooves, as well as more complex feet where boxy structures can be used for a base, and then for the elements that are added on top, like toes.
Now the last major point I want to address 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 I'm 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 on the informal demos page.
There are a few key points to this approach:
The specific shape of the eyesockets - 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 eyesocket 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 with a bit of finagling it can still apply pretty well. To demonstrate this for another student, I found the most banana-headed rhinoceros I could, and threw together this demo.
Now, I am going to have to assign some revisions below, both for you to address the issue regarding observation (which is a big one), as well as the head construction matter.
Next Steps:
Please submit the following:
2 pages of organic intersections
4 pages of animal constructions
For the animal constructions, I want you to write down the dates of each session you spent on it, along with a rough estimate of how long was spent in each given sitting. Also, refrain from working on more than one construction in a given day - meaning, if you've even touched one, you should wait until the next day until starting on another.
Aight i think i got what you mean here,i'll let the work speak for itself but i do wana clarify a few things.
Frankly i have always have a problem with the organic intersection, i only know one way of tackling the exercise which is just stacking each one on top of each other non stop, but that's a bit boring for me.Which is why i tried to play around with different orientations, but it's true that i didnt put enough thoughts into it which is why they came off wonky on my original submission.
About the cast shadow, while i guess i can also chart it up to rushing the exercise like you said, i still think it's cuz i dont really know how to apply it properly.
I'll leave it up to you to see ofc. I think i got the main idea of that exercise down judging from my animal constructions, but i guess i didnt communicate it through this exercise well enough
For the animal constructions, i have gotten most out of your critique, griping the shape to make everything more solid, trying out boxy shape for the feets (even though it's still messy, i can see myself slowly getting better with each attempts). Trying out adding masses that dont effect the silhouette directly (mostly just adding more muscle masses on the legs).
One of your note was that i was spending not enough time observing and studying my subjects, and i do agree that it's true, but i also want to say that it's also the fact that this lesson primary focus is still constructing forms that feels solid and beleiveble and since you dont require the inclusion of references, i thought that if it look like it can stand up one its own, even though it probably looks nothing like the orignal reference, that is good enough at the core of the lesson. And a lot of the time, since im still lacking in a lot of diffrent fundamentals, further into the construction, i will inevitably deviate from the original ref even if i make sure to look back constantly to it during the session. So in some case i will chose to go on my own intuiton to maintain the solidity of the construction rather than trying to make sure it fits with the reference. Again i do believe that i wasnt spending enough time observing and these redos did prove that, but i figure it's worth to let you know about it.
And lastly about the head construction, considering there's only one method to work with, i didnt really managed to "imrpove" it by a whole lot other than making sure im not rushing the eye sockets, trying to make everything fits nicely together. Varying degree of success depening on the subjects.
Also do you think you can update the informal demos pages with more recent example of the head cosntruction like that rihno demo you showed me and more about the boxy feet. Or even just pin it on the lesson channels so we'll have more examples to work with.
Bit of a long rant here sorry.
For the future, be sure to limit your comments to the bare minimum of what is necessary. As we don't have a lot of time to spread around and a ton of students to help, we just don't have the resources to pick out the important points from longer replies. While students do often feel that explaining their choices and actions helps with the critique, it actually does the opposite in many circumstances, by mixing what we would infer naturally from the work (which is essentially what we're trained to do - as you said, letting the work speak for itself) with other information that may not be entirely accurate, given that it's influenced by your own assessment of things.
Starting with your organic intersections, the approach of stacking sausage forms ad infinitum, is what is assigned for the exercise. I understand that it's not inherently exciting, but as explained here in this video from Lesson 0, it's best you not attempt to spice things up.
Your revision on this exercise is certainly better in terms of how the forms are stacked, but I can see you are still running into issues with some of the cast shadows. Most noticeably, you didn't cast shadows on the ground plane. Do be sure to do this in the future, as you did previously.
One issue that was not as overt was what we see here. The sausage on the far right casts a shadow upon the sausage beneath it, as well as onto the sausage along the left side. There is however a gap between these two shadows, despite being cast by the same form, which itself is contiguous and without holes or gaps. This is one of those little signs I try to find, as they speak to how a student is thinking about the problem. It appears you're thinking of two sausages at a time, in pairs, resulting in independent and inconsistent shadows being cast from one form onto other, different sausages.
Instead, try to think of it in terms of the sausage casting the shadow, and the entire rest of the structure, including the ground. Also, keep in mind that a gap in the shadow implies a gap in the form. There may be cases where pieces of a shadow get projected onto different surfaces, resulting in kind of pieces of the shadow being offset from one another, but you should be able to follow the entirety of that structure across all of the surfaces present.
As to your animal constructions, I can certainly see areas of improvement, though there is still plenty of room to apply my past feedback and yield more growth. That's not by any stretch abnormal - what I'm looking for is primarily signs that you understand that feedback, and that you're applying the techniques correctly. So, I'm just going to quickly go over any points that I feel should be addressed:
I can certainly see that you're putting a lot more thought into how your additional masses are being designed. I see some spots where this can still be improved - for example, how on your horse's back you missed the opportunity to have those masses wrap along the big structures you laid in for the shoulder and hip - this would have made those back masses feel more grounded, in establishing relationships between different structures. You also did a better job of this for the bear.
In my feedback I did take some time to call out the tendency towards focusing your legs' additional masses on specifically capturing details along those legs' silhouettes only, and that you were neglecting to consider the "inbetween" forms that fill the gaps. It appears you did not address this issue.
I also provided a diagram demonstrating how you can tackle your animals' feet, but this does not appear to be implemented either.
Your approach to head construction doesn't really seem to implement the approach detailed in the informal head construction demo I pointed you to. At least, not directly. The eyesockets appear to be drawn with different parts being combined into the same smooth stroke, rather than 5 separate marks to gradually design the given pentagonal shape - this causes them to have less of a clear and believable relationship with the cranial ball, in that instead of feeling like the eyesocket is being carved into its surface, it feels more like an arbitrary shape being pasted on top of the drawing. There are elements of the approach that are present, especially in building out the muzzle, but you're not defining the forehead either. As a whole, it feels like while you made an effort to apply the approach, you were not as specific as this course really demands.
I am concerned about issues with observation in your horse, though gradually over the set your observation does appear to get better.
As a whole, I think the concerns I raised come more to how you applied the feedback I provided before, rather than your actual understanding. You will probably want to reflect on how you're approaching that information, in order to implement it as effectively as you can - this may require you read back over that feedback multiple times over a longer period of time, taking notes so you can have summaries of what you need to focus on readily available as you go through the work, etc.
That said, that all falls into your lap - I think you're showing enough general progress that you can continue tackling this on your own, so I am going to be marking this lesson as complete.
Next Steps:
Move onto the 250 cylinder challenge, which is a prerequisite for Lesson 6.
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