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5:34 PM, Monday March 7th 2022

I've noted some feedback right on your horse drawing here. While you are certainly moving in the right direction here, there are still some notable concerns. Some of these are handled correctly at times in other constructions, but there's enough inconsistency that I feel that some things need to be solidified further:

  • Most notably is the shape of your additional masses - you have a tendency to use more rounded corners, and seem to be pretty hesitant about using any kinds of sharp corners at all. When we put rounded corners everywhere, it robs us of the opportunity to establish how the masses hook around and continue along the other side of the structure to which we're attaching, which is an important part of establishing the sense that this new mass is "gripping" the existing structure. Rather than drawing all the way through your masses, this is the main issue you're running into with additional masses.

  • Remember that when you work with multiple masses that pile atop one another, you should not be stamping them right on top of the previous shape, nor should you be cutting those silhouettes off (as you did here on your elephant's back. Actually wrap the next mass around the previous one, as as soon as any of these are added, they become part of the "existing" structure. You did this more correctly here on your last page.

  • While I did catch you cutting back into the silhouette of the horse's muzzle here, this is not something I saw much of elsewhere in your other constructions.

  • When building onto the front of the muzzle there, I can see you slipping back to thinking about adding those as 2D shapes. Note how we approached the same thing in this rhino head construction I provided in my original feedback. They're defined as complete, 3D forms, with distinct planes. While you don't strictly need to define the internal edges, if you opt not to include them, the silhouette of the form itself should have strategically placed sharp corners to imply those edges/distinctions between planes.

  • I didn't mark this one out, but the upper section of your front legs are ellipses rather than sausages - though this is something you're noticeably improving with throughout the other constructions.

You're making progress, but I would like to see the issue with the design of your additional masses addressed more completely (that's not to say you aren't making progress, you're quite close and just need to tighten up the specific, intentional design of those shapes). I'm going to assign a couple additional pages below.

Next Steps:

Please submit 2 more pages of animal constructions. For these, leave the texture/detail out and focus only on construction.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
4:55 PM, Saturday April 30th 2022
4:50 PM, Monday May 2nd 2022

Nicely done! Your work is definitely coming along much better now, and I can see that your consideration for how you can go about designing your additional masses to convey their relationship with the existing structure has come a good ways. I'm especially pleased with the fawn at the end there.

Just one quick suggestion - when drawing eyelids, instead of drawing them together in a sort of traditional "eye shape", one thing that can help us focus more on how they wrap around the existing structure is to actually draw the lids separately, as their own complete masses as shown here.

Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete.

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.
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