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

Before I get to critiquing your work itself I wanted to quickly note that when submitting your work, scanning your work (more specifically using something that actually tries to boost the contrast as it would a normal document) is far from ideal. When it comes to scanning, the reason it's better to avoid anything that performs additional processing like this on your images is that it can make it a lot harder to determine whether the linework itself was executed poorly, or if it's the software deciding to throw out a lot of extra marks that help give the ones that did show up context. The phones on most cameras will work fine, especially if the photos are taken in sunlight, which really helps to maximise the potential of that hardware.

Anyway, I'm going to be critiquing the work based on what I see - so do keep that in mind in case what you've submitted doesn't accurately represent what the pages look like in real life.

Starting with your organic forms there is something to call out, it seems you did one page of contour ellipses, though the assignment was for both pages to be contour curves. Not a huge problem, but it does suggest that you may want to be more attentive when reading through the instructions.

You're rather inconsistent about sticking to the characteristics of simple sausages that are introduced here. Some of your forms are spot on, which shows you are quite capable of drawing these forms, but others (such as these two with one end significantly larger than the other) are a long way off, which suggests you may not have had these simple properties in mind as a priority. Focusing on those simple properties for each form helps us to capture the illusion of solidity for each one, which in turn is very valuable in using these sausages as one of the core building blocks of our constructions.

Your contour lines and ellipses are mostly sticking to the same degree, which is a mistake. 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. You can also see a good example of how to vary your contour curves in this diagram showing the different ways in which our contour lines can change the way in which the sausage is perceived.

A few of the contour lines also look just a touch stiff/hesitant, so keep pushing yourself to prioritise a smooth, confident stroke first and foremost.

Moving on to your insect constructions, something that stands out right away is that most of your pages feature one small drawing surrounded by lots of blank empty space. There are two things that we must give each of our drawings throughout this course in order to get the most out of them. Those two things are space and time. By drawing your constructions much smaller than the page itself allows you are artificially limiting how much space you give a given drawing, which limits your brain's capacity for spatial reasoning, while also making it harder to engage your whole arm while drawing. I recommend you draw your constructions larger to use more of the space available on the page.

The second thing I noticed is that you don't seem to be sticking to the principles of markmaking that were introduced in lesson 1.

• There are places where you're scratching your lines together instead of using a continuous stroke, such as the centre line on the abdomen of this spider.

• There are some signs of stiffness showing up in some of the lines, for example the contour curves on the abdomen of the same spider.

• Sometimes you're zig-zagging your marks instead of maintaining a consistent trajectory, for example on the wings of this construction.

You're also going back over your lines a lot, presumably to make corrections and/or reinforce the silhouette with additional line weight.

In ending up with all of these different lines representing the edges of the same form, the viewer is given a number of different possible interpretations. Regardless of which interpretation they choose to follow, there will always be another present there to contradict it, which ultimately undermines their suspension of disbelief and reminds them that they're looking at a flat, two dimensional drawing.

Furthermore, the ghosting method emphasises the importance of making one mark only. Correcting mistakes isn't actually helpful, given that the end result of the exercise is far less relevant and significant than the actual process used to achieve it. Rather, having a habit of correcting your mistakes can lean into the idea of not investing as much time into each individual stroke, and so it's something that should be avoided in favour of putting as much time as is needed to execute each mark.

Additional line weight is a tool, and in this course we use it for the purpose of clarifying overlaps, and restricting it to localised areas where those overlaps occur. You can find an explanation for how to apply line weight in this video. This prevents us form using line weight in random places, or worse, attempting to correct or hide mistakes behind line weight.

I'm noticing a tendency to start your construction off lighter, and then increase the weight of your marks as you progress. This can encourage us to redraw more of the structure than we strictly need to. I would strongly recommend that you maintain roughly the same thickness of line throughout the entire construction, applying further line weight as discussed above only towards the end.

It is not uncommon for students to do quite well with their markmaking and application of the ghosting method in the technical exercises of the first couple of lessons, and then let things slip a little when they move on to constructing more exciting subjects in lesson 3 onwards. The thing to keep in mind here is that everything we do in this course is an exercise, and for these exercises to be effective it is crucial that you continue to apply the concepts and techniques taught in previous lessons.

The next point I want to discuss relates to 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 fly 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 some 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.

On the same image I marked in blue where you'd extended off the existing form of the abdomen using a partial, flat shape, not quite providing enough information for us to understand how it actually connects to the existing structure in 3D space. I believe this may be occurring in paces on the legs there as well, but with all the redrawn lines it's honestly pretty confusing so I've left them alone.

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.

The next thing I wanted to talk about is leg construction. It looks like you tried out lots of different strategies for constructing legs. 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.

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.

Here are some specific texture issues I'm seeing:

• Filling in large areas of black like this doesn't add textural information to your construction, it actually removes information by obscuring the underlying construction, making it more difficult to provide feedback. Please avoid this at all costs.

• Copying colour patterns, such as the stripes on this construction has nothing to do with the forms that are physically present. Imagine your subject matter has been painted one solid colour (such as white or grey) when approaching texture in this course.

• For the same reason, filling eyes with black simply because they appear dark in the reference is also a mistake.

• Never use scribbling or rely on randomness to apply texture. Each shadow shape should be carefully considered and intentionally designed.

This feedback is, by necessity, very dense, and you may need to spend some time reading through it all a few times as well as reviewing the relevant sections of lesson material. Once you've had time to absorb this feedback I'd like you to complete some additional pages to address the points I've raised here. Additionally, I'd like you to adhere to the following restrictions when approaching these revisions:

1- Don't work on more than one construction in a day. You can and should absolutely spread a single construction across multiple sittings or days if that's what you need to do the work to the best of your current ability (taking as much time as you need to construct each form, draw each shape, and execute each mark), but if you happen to just put the finishing touches on one construction, don't start the next one until the following day. This is to encourage you to push yourself to the limits of how much you're able to put into a single construction, and avoid rushing ahead into the next.

2- Write down beside each construction the dates of the sessions you spent on it, along with a rough estimate of how much time you spent in that session.

Please complete 1 page of organic forms with contour curves and 5 pages of insect constructions.

In brief:

• Draw your constructions larger.

• Use the ghosting method consistently, and follow the principles of markmaking.

• Restrict line weight to clarifying overlaps and do not redraw your lines.

• Do not attempt to alter the silhouette of forms you have already drawn, try to build your constructions by adding complete new forms instead.

• Use the sausage method of leg construction.

• If you choose to add texture, try your best to follow the guidance from the texture section of lesson 2.