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1:08 AM, Monday May 25th 2020

Alrighty! Starting with the organic intersections, there are a few things I want to point out. First off, don't let your sausage forms cut into one another. The focus here is on getting them to pile up, and maintain their simple nature. When you start having them get a little "melty" it starts undermining the individual integrity of the form. Secondly, always think about how the form you're about to add wraps around the existing ones. Try not to stack flat shapes on top of one another, think about how they're three dimensional right from the get-go. Lastly, your cast shadows tend to feel a little inconsistent - remember that cast shadows don't cling to the form that casts them - they're projected onto a different surface, and if that surface bends away, the shadow follows. Here are some direct notes on your organic intersections.

Moving onto your animal constructions, you have largely done a very good job. There are a few things that stand out as issues which I will address, but as far as the core principles of the lesson, you've followed them very well and clearly understand the material to a considerable degree. I'm very happy with how you approach construction as a whole - you wrap forms quite well around one another, you employ the sausage method very effectively to create legs that maintain a sense of gesture while remaining solid.

The first thing that stood out to me though were your heads. I feel like this is the only place you really tend to skip steps, and it's entirely at odds with how you approach everything else. Where the remainder of your constructions are entirely built up from simple, solid forms, gradually adding masses that relate and adhere to the underlying structure to achieve more nuanced features and subtle form-based details, your heads tend to start out with a cranial ball and then jump right into largely observational drawing, creating more complex shapes.

This changes somewhat as you move through the lesson, though there's another entirely different issue I'll touch upon there. As far as the head goes, I'd like to point you to the following head demos from the informal demo page:

As you can see, both of these are very structured, just like the rest of the body. You put down the cranial ball, and then attach forms one by one. None of these forms are particularly complex, and the way they relate and intersect to the existing structure is clearly defined. When it comes to the eye socket, it is also buttressed firmly against the forms of the muzzle, brow ridge, cheek bone, etc. rather than left to float more loosely in space.

Moving down to your later drawings (the birds, reptiles, and hybrid), the issue I wanted to point out was simply that you've switched here to drawing a somewhat fainter underdrawing, and then followed it up with darker "final" lines. While your drawings still generally look fine and I'm not seeing any of the issues that tend to arise when students employ this kind of approach (like tracing back over lines with slower, more hesitant strokes that focus entirely on how the lines exist as 2D elements on the page instead of edges that flow through 3D space), I still don't want you to approach these lessons in this manner.

Instead, continue drawing them as you did your first few - every mark put down confidently, not thinking about the drawing as being split up into lines that you'd rather hide versus lines you'd keep. Every line is important, as each stroke defines a solid form in 3D space. You can always come back towards the end to add line weight to key areas and clarify certain overlaps, but up until that very last step, your line weight should be fairly even throughout.

Aside from these points, your work really has come out well. I'll happily mark this lesson as complete. Keep up the great work.

Next Steps:

Feel free to move onto the 250 cylinder challenge, which is a prerequisite for lesson 6.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
5:09 PM, Monday May 25th 2020

Thanks a lot for your critique Uncomfortable.

I applied your tips here: https://imgur.com/a/P3y6VjA

I followed the moose's head demo and tried on my own on a girafe head. I did my best to focus on construction and line weight. Though I'm not sure it turned out OK. Also sorry forgot to save the girafe reference.

Also tried sausages again and as you said I'm having difficulty wrapping them around each other. I'm having difficulty guessing how it wraps in the back of the sausage it sits on. Not sure if that makes sense. Also tried to apply cast shadows better but I believe I still need to improve at them.

Anyway please tell me if it's better.

Thanks a lot and have a good day!

5:23 PM, Monday May 25th 2020

Those are looking much better! The construction of the giraffe head is much more thorough, and your organic forms are indeed wrapping around the underlying structure. This last part is not something I thought you actually had difficulty with, since you employed it well throughout your animal constructions. I figured it was just a contextual thing where you weren't really thinking about it within that exercise.

The cast shadows are also looking better, though do remember to keep thinking about where your light source is supposed to be, so you don't end up with inconsistent shadow placement. For example, right now you've got the leftmost form casting a shadow to the right, and the rightmost form casting a shadow to the left. Also, that rightmost form's shadow on the ground shouldn't be floating separately. That would only happen if there was a physical gap between the forms through which light could shine to illuminate the ground. Shadows are, after all, parts of surfaces where the light has been blocked from reaching.

5:56 PM, Monday May 25th 2020

Thanks a lot I actually never thought about light source so that must be the problem.

I'll keep that in mind from now on!

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