Hello Zanderfreemandraw, I'll be the teaching assistant handling your lesson 5 critique.

Starting with your organic intersections, you're doing a good job of capturing how these forms slump and sag over one another with a shared sense of gravity, and your forms feel stable and supported, like we could walk away from the piles and nothing would topple off, well done.

Some of your contour curves look a touch stiff and hesitant, (particularly on the second page) remember to prioritise making a smooth flowing curve, as introduced here in the principles of markmaking.

Your shadows appear to be following a reasonably consistent light source, and you're projecting them far enough to read as shadows rather than line weight. In future try to think more about the curvature of the surfaces the shadows are being cast onto, and how this will affect the shape of the shadows.

Moving on to your animal constructions, your work shows a lot of potential, although there are a number of factors that are preventing you from getting the most out of what this lesson has to offer. Some of these are new in this lesson, whereas others were definitely called out in your Lesson 4 critique, which suggests that you may not have gone through that critique thoroughly enough to recall them with enough specificity to apply them to your work here. That's something you're going to have to stay on top of - the feedback given in earlier lessons is meant to be applied going forward, so that they do not need to be called out multiple times.

There is a lot to get to here, and to make this more digestible I'll spilt it into 6 key areas to address. Markmaking, core construction, taking actions in 3D, leg construction, additional masses, head construction.

Markmaking

Keep in mind that the principles of markmaking that were introduced in lesson 1 should be followed throughout this course. We do not get to be lackadaisical about this just because we have moved on to constructing real subjects.

Some of your lines are smooth continuous and unbroken (which is what we're aiming for) so there's no lack of ability here, but there are enough lines that are stiff and wobbly, or sketchy (leaving gaps between lines rather than maintaining tight specific relationships between them) to suggest that this wasn't always at the forefront of your mind when tackling these constructions. To address this issue I'd like you to revisit the ghosting method and make sure you're using it to full effect for every line you draw in these exercises. I'd also suggest you review this section and double check that you're using your whole arm, as switching back to drawing from the wrist often leads to stiff, wobbly lines.

Additionally, remember to draw around your ellipses two full times before lifting your pen off the page, this will help you to execute them smoothly. You do this correctly sometimes, but not consistently, and this is something we insist on students doing for every ellipse free-handed in this course, as explained in this section.

Core construction

Core construction is the foundation upon which we build the rest of the construction, so it is crucial to get this solid before moving forward. Your demo draw alongs are on the right track, but many of your independent constructions are missing major elements, suggesting you could stand to pay much closer attention to this section of the lesson intro page and the one directly below it which cover the major masses and how to combine them into a "torso sausage," which is necessary for most animals. The notable exception being birds, which have a separate example further down the page. These are not suggestions, or vague guidelines, they are key instructions for the construction method used throughout this lesson. Here I've pointed out some specific issues on your hybrid as an example, and here are the missing elements applied.

Taking actions in 3D

During your lesson 4 critique I talked at length about the importance of distinguishing between the actions we take that occur in 3D space - drawing complete forms with self-enclosed silhouettes and defining the way in which they connect to or wrap around the existing structure (either through the use of an intersectional contour line in the case of the former, or the design of the form's silhouette in the case of the latter), and the actions that occur in 2D space (altering the silhouettes of existing forms, tacking on individual marks to add to a construction without defining how it's meant to exist in 3D space, etc). In your work here, I'm still seeing a number of places where you are indeed working in 2D rather than 3D.

There are quite a few pages where you'd cut back inside things you have already drawn, as highlighted in red on these foxes and these rhinos (the purple section is where you appear to have cut back inside the cranial ball of the full-body construction). These actions in 2D space undermine the 3D illusion, both for the viewer, and for you. Creating believable, solid, three dimensional constructions despite drawing on a flat page requires us to first and foremost convince ourselves of this illusion, this lie we're telling, as discussed here back in Lesson 2. The more our approach reinforces the illusion, the more we make new marks that reinforce it even further. The more our marks break the illusion, the more marks we make that then further break the illusion, for us and for everyone else.

You're also very prone to extending your constructions with flat partial shapes. Normally I would mark examples of this with blue, but on this hybrid it actually made more sense to do the opposite, and highlight the complete 3D forms with green.

Please reread your lesson 4 critique where I explained how altering the silhouette of forms you have already drawn undermines the 3D illusion, and shared numerous examples showing how to build your constructions using complete 3D forms instead. Here is an additional example, showing the various actions we can take when interacting with a sphere, which might click with you better than the diagrams I already showed you. When engaging with organic constructions in this course you should aim to only take actions by adding in 3D.

On a related note, in your lesson 4 feedback I explained how to "cap off" your forms if a construction won't fit on the page, and even demonstrated this here but you're still shooting your constructions off the page as lines on a number of pages, such as this deer leaving the construction open-ended and flattening it out.

Leg construction

The other point that I made sure to talk about in your lesson 4 critique was leg construction. We discussed the merits of the sausage method as well as providing some specific guidance to help you to apply it more effectively, and stipulating "this method should be used throughout lesson 5 too." You were also provided with an example of the method being applied to this dog leg.

Scrolling through your work, it doesn't look like you've attempted to use the sausage method of leg construction at all, which is unfortunate, as you were doing reasonably well with it in the previous lesson. I do understand where this comes from, as there are some demos in lesson 5 that show other methods of leg construction. This will be rectified once the ongoing overhaul of the lesson content reaches lesson 5, but for now, we stress the importance of the sausage method during lesson 4 critiques as a way of hand-feeding individual students on the official critique track the most effective and up to date methods for building solid constructions. What I do find perplexing is that your wolf demo draw-along features legs built from flat shapes, when the actual demo does use the sausage method, as shown in this step. Also, when you construct legs, remember to establish the shoulder and thigh masses with ellipses as discussed in the linked section of the wolf demo. Sometimes you'll draw these with arbitrary shapes, and on this rhino they appear to be completely missing.

You'll find some examples of applying the sausage method of leg construction to animals on the informal demos page, this donkey is a fairly comprehensive construction to study.

As a quick bonus I'll also share these notes on foot construction where Uncomfortable shows how to introduce structure to the foot by drawing a boxy form- that is, forms whose corners are defined in such a way that they imply the distinction between the different planes within its silhouette, without necessarily having to define those edges themselves - to lay down a structure that reads as being solid and three dimensional. Then we can use similarly boxy forms to attach toes.

Additional masses

Where lesson 4 introduced the idea of building constructions with complete 3D forms, here in lesson 5 we get a bit more specific about how we design these forms. One thing that helps with the shape here is to think about how the mass would behave when existing first in the void of empty space, on its own. It all comes down to the silhouette of the mass - here, with nothing else to touch it, our mass would exist like a soft ball of meat or clay, made up only of outward curves. A simple circle for a silhouette.

Then, as it presses against an existing structure, the silhouette starts to get more complex. It forms inward curves wherever it makes contact, responding directly to the forms that are present. The silhouette is never random, of course - always changing in response to clear, defined structure. You can see this demonstrated in this diagram.

While your use of additional masses is quite sparse (probably due to relying on taking actions in 2D instead) where you do use this tool to build on your constructions they are coming along decently. I've made a couple of edits to your hybrid to show how to improve their design. In green I've put in a neck, so your additional masses have something solid to attach to. The blue ellipse is a more appropriate shoulder mass, generous in size and attached well up the side of the body. I've used this shoulder mass to help anchor two of your additional masses more securely to the construction, notice how the mass above the neck has been pulled down from the spine and pressed against the shoulder, creating an inward curve where it interacts with this existing structure. The more interlocked they are, the more spatial relationships we define between the masses, the more solid and grounded everything appears. Also- really important- these two masses have their own complete fully enclosed silhouettes, I haven't cut them off where they pass behind the head.

The mass above the rump had its own complete silhouette (good work!) but was getting too complex where it was exposed to fresh air and there was nothing present in the construction to press against it. I've broken it into two pieces, using one mass to construct each bump. Trying to achieve too much with one mass tends to flatten them out, make sure each one serves a specific purpose.

Head construction

The last thing I wanted to talk about is head construction. Lesson 5 has a lot of different strategies for constructing heads, between the various demos. Given how the course has developed, and how Uncomfortable is finding new, more effective ways for students to tackle certain problems. So not all the approaches shown are equal, but they do have their uses. As it stands, as explained at the top of the tiger demo page (here), the current approach that is the most generally useful, as well as the most meaningful in terms of these drawings all being exercises in spatial reasoning, is what you'll find here in this informal head demo.

There are a few key points to this approach:

• The specific shape of the eye sockets - the specific pentagonal shape allows for a nice wedge in which the muzzle can fit in between the sockets, as well as a flat edge across which we can lay the forehead area.

• This approach focuses heavily on everything fitting together - no arbitrary gaps or floating elements. This allows us to ensure all of the different pieces feel grounded against one another, like a three dimensional puzzle.

• We have to be mindful of how the marks we make are cuts along the curving surface of the cranial ball - working in individual strokes like this (rather than, say, drawing the eye socket with an ellipse) helps a lot in reinforcing this idea of engaging with a 3D structure.

Try your best to employ this method when doing constructional drawing exercises using animals in the future, as closely as you can. Sometimes it seems like it's not a good fit for certain heads, but as shown in in this banana-headed rhino it can be adapted for a wide array of animals.

Conclusion

This feedback is, by necessity, quite dense, and I'd like you to take as much time as you need to read it thoroughly, as well as reviewing the relevant sections of lesson material and your lesson 4 critique. You may also want to take some notes in your own words to remind yourself of what to work on. Once you've done that I'd like you to complete some extra pages to address the points I've raised here. For these I'd like you to adhere to the following restrictions:

• 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.

• 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 6 pages of animal constructions. If anything said to you here, or previously, is unclear or confusing you are allowed to ask questions.