Starting with your organic forms with contour curves, great work! I'm very pleased with how you've approached each of these pages, in terms of ensuring each form is given ample room, but the totality of the space available to you is used to its maximum potential. As far as the exercise itself goes, you're doing quite well - sticking to the characteristics of simple sausages, drawing your contour curves with confidence, etc. Just remember that as we slide further away from the viewer, the contour curves would get wider, as discussed back in the Lesson 1 ellipses video. You tend often to maintain the same degree, although I did notice at least one case where you have the shift reversed.

Carrying onto your insect constructions, by and large you're doing very well, although there are some areas where I can offer a bit of advice to keep you on the right track. The main one of these is to do with the distinction between taking actions in 2D space (where we're just drawing lines on a flat page) versus actions in 3D space (where, as we draw our forms, we consider how they're meant to respect and reinforce the illusion that the existing structure already there on the page is in fact three dimensional and solid.

Because we're drawing on a flat piece of paper, we have a lot of freedom to make whatever marks we choose - it just so happens that the majority of those marks will 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.

So as shown here I've noted a number of places where you cut into your existing forms in red, and a couple spots where you extended off them in blue without strictly establishing how this new extension relates to the existing structure in 3D space.

Instead, whenever we want to build upon our construction or change something, we can do so by introducing new 3D forms to the structure - forms with their own fully self-enclosed 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 accepting that everything we draw is 3D, and therefore needs to be treated as such in order for 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 - although I see that you've gone through those demos already, and that you did so quite well. As I've 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.

In all honesty, I think your work really does demonstrate a lot of very strong 3D-oriented thinking, and it's very clear in how you're building the bulk of your forms. I would however keep a couple things in mind:

  • Line weight can be dangerous if you apply it too broadly, because it involves you tracing back over existing linework, and focusing on how that linework exists on the flat page. Generally avoid using line weight as a clean-up pass, and instead allow the underlying linework to stand for itself. Instead, use line weight as described here - to clarify the overlaps between different forms. Also, apply it only to one form at a time - so don't allow the same stroke of line weight to jump from one to the next.

  • Also, if you've got a somewhat looser ellipse, treat the outermost perimeter of that ellipse as though it's the edge of the form's silhouette. This will ensure that any stray linework is contained within it, rather than left to linger outside.

Continuing forwards. I can see you making extensive use of the sausage method, although not always in its entirety. Remember - as noted in the sausage method diagram there are important points to adhere to, from using segments that adhere to the characteristics of simple sausages (I notice some places where you drift more towards ellipses - this is more likely to occur if you draw through your sausage forms, since that's something we specifically do for our ellipses to lean into the arm's natural desire to draw ellipses, and should not be applied to your sausages for that same reason), and in some places neglecting to define the joints between them with contour lines.

When it comes to building upon those structures, you're doing great. I did however just want to provide the following diagrams just to make sure you have them, as I provide them to all students at this stage. From what I can see, you understand these concepts already, but review them anyway just in case.

And that about covers it! I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete.