Hi H_R7! Here is my critique for your lesson 4, I hope you find it helpful.

Organic Forms with Contour Lines

• simplicity: your forms are mostly simple but there are a few that could use improvement, e.g. the leftmost L-shaped form on the 2nd page. It is more than 2 connected balls as required by the exercise. Try to avoid such uneven or extreme tapering.

• contour curves: I see you tried to switch the degree a bit from left to right facing curves. However, I would add more variation in the degrees (shown below).

• contour axis alignment: mostly good but some forms have very misaligned ellipses (be careful!)

4 Pages: Pure Constructions

The big forms of the constructions are good. I like how you use contour curves, epsecially for the beetle and ant. Keep that up! However, I must point out some recurring problems you seem to encounter:

• legs: your leg forms are often very uneven and wobbly. Sometimes you use lines. Like described here https://drawabox.com/lesson/4/3/step10 you should use the sausage forms just like in the previous exercise with organic forms and contours. It seems to me that you followed this rule when you started e.g. with the beetle and ant, louse too, but as you kept drawing you lost track of it, especially with the scorpions and mantis.

• going over old lines: you went multiple times over old lines for your bee/wasp and dragonfly constructions. Perhaps you intended to thicken the lines or made some mistakes. The issue is, it seems you tried to “chicken-scratch” this. Because of using multiple shorter discontinuous lines, you get this messy and unkempt look. You have to avoid this. Slow down, think about what your goal is, and then carefully thicken the line like in the lesson 1 overlapping lines exercise. Or add 1 line for the silhouette detail (see this: https://drawabox.com/lesson/4/3/step6).

If you make a mistake, leave it. Try to work with it, rather than against it. If you try to hide it with other lines, it will only make it more obvious!

6 Pages: Detailed

The constructions in this category also suffer similar issues as pure constructions.

• subtractive constructions: in the mantis and bee/wasp drawing you “cut” your forms to define more detail. This is not how you should construct things for Drawabox. Specifically, subtractive constructions will ruin the silhouette and make the image more 2D. When you work additively, it looks more like additional 3D forms on top of a 3D form (see images below) and this is what you want (and are required to do for Drawabox).

Summary

You clearly understand how to do these constructions, and really know how to use contour lines to your advantage; however, because of mistakes or fear of ruining your existing construction, you go over your lines multiple times, and not in a continuous manner. Your forms also tend to get wobbly and more complex than necessary.

Fixing these issues will make future lessons much easier (and more fun!)

Images with examples: https://imgur.com/a/KYLzQNA

edit: unfinished sentence