7:34 PM, Friday July 17th 2020
Starting with the first few pages of additional forms on sausage structures, I outlined your main issues here. Basically, the specific positioning of your additional forms matters a lot. That little sharp corner we get right where we get the mass to wrap around the underlying structure has to fall right at the edge of the underlying structure, because that's what gives the impression that the form continues along behind the form. What you're doing right now is very similar to drawing a contour curve that doesn't actually stretch all the way across from one edge of the form to the other. It ends up reading as complex flat shapes that are just stamped on top of one another.
I'm also noticing a continued tendency to draw your ribcages way too small - this is something I pointed out in my last critique. Again, read through this section. It states that the ribcage should occupy about 1/2 the length of the torso. You're not drawing equally sized masses for the ribcage and pelvis - the pelvis is FAR smaller.
Overall, looking through these sausage structures I can't help but get the sense that you're drawing more than thinking. It's normal to be frustrated, but I don't see a lot of patient consideration of what you're doing. Instead, as you push through you make more common mistakes, like the prevalence of drawing ellipses rather than sausage forms in your last two pages of this exercise. You also frequently don't draw through your ellipses, as you're meant to do for each and every ellipse you draw through these lessons.
To that point, your animal constructions seem to follow the same kind of pattern. Most students end up having to put a lot of time into each and every mark they draw, into observing their references not only carefully but constantly, regularly looking back at their reference to identify where the next major form in their structure has to go, ensuring that they're not working from their memory.
Looking at a number of factors - the amount of time between submissions, for example - I genuinely think you just go in with far higher expectations of how quickly you should be able to draw these things. Your Lesson 4 work was marked as complete on June 17th, and your initial Lesson 5 submission was on July 6th - not quite three weeks. While that's not an unreasonable amount of time, it's not unusual for students to take a full month or more to get through this lesson.
Then, we can look at your latest revisions, which were submitted about two and a half days after being assigned. That's more than a third of the original work assigned with the lesson, done in less than a seventh of the time. Combine things like the 50% rule assigned back in Lesson 0, and that is by no means enough time to complete the work as it is intended.
Long story short, yes - you do struggle with this work quite a bit, but I can also see progress. While half the time you forget to draw sausages instead of ellipses, when you do draw proper sausage chains, they've improved greatly over how they were drawn in lesson 4. The issue appears to be that you do not invest as much time as is needed to every single mark you draw, to observing your reference constantly instead of relying on memory, and to follow the instructions as they are written.
You may have certain disadvantages - for example, forgetfulness when it comes to the many issues frequently raised - but none of those are inherently stopping you from learning to draw, it just makes the process more difficult. What is hindering you most is that these difficulties are causing you to become frustrated, and that frustration is no doubt causing you to expect far more of yourself than you should.
I am going to ask you to do this lesson over, as a new submission - but before that, I'd like to see examples of you actually adhering to the 50% rule from Lesson 0 (which is explained here). Show me what you draw outside of Drawabox, show me your attempts at drawing the things that ultimately spur you to learn how to improve.
Next Steps:
Do the full lesson over, and post it as a new submission rather than as a revision. Prior to doing this, show me some of the drawing you do outside of Drawabox, outside of following courses, as set out back in Lesson 0 as something that should receive at least 50% of the time you spend drawing.