Starting with your organic intersections, these are definitely moving in the right direction, and I can see that you are thinking about how these forms interact with one another, how they slump and sag over one another in response to gravity. There is still room for improvement in this regard, in terms of thinking about how those forms would fall in a natural fashion - for example, on the first page, that topmost form has a pretty significant gap between it and the shadow it's casting, which tells us that it's actually holding itself up in the air (despite gravity), making it feel kind of unnatural. Still, you're making good progress here, and your shadows are coming along nicely as well.

Moving onto your animal constructions, I think there's a lot of overall progress and growth here, both in general, and across this set. There are things I want to call out, and things that can be improved, but as a whole I'm definitely seeing that you're thinking a lot about how the things you're drawing exist in 3D space, and how you're acting upon them in a 3D world. Looking back at your Lesson 4 work, it was present to a point there as well, but it has definitely gotten much stronger.

Some students have problems where due to how they're drawing, they're unable to understand what they're constructing as a three dimensional entity - but in your case, it's more a matter that you definitely do understand them in this regard, but that some of the shortcuts you take at times, or the ways you use certain techniques fail to express the depth of that understanding. Doesn't mean it's not there - just that we need to refine how you express it.

The first point I wanted to raise comes down to the use of contour lines. Across these drawings, you have a strong tendency to use a lot of them - specifically the contour lines that sit along the surface of a single form (or that at least behave in that manner), as introduced in Lesson 2's organic forms with contour lines. While that exercise was very useful for introducing the concept of a contour line, it actually gives us one of the least useful ways in which that tool can be used.

In that exercise, we pile on contour lines, covering a form from one end to the other - but in truth, the majority of those contour lines don't really end up contributing all that much. They actually suffer from diminishing returns, where the first one will help a lot in making a form feel more solid and three dimensional, but the second will help less, and the third even less. So this carries over into our own drawings, and if we get into the habit of just slapping them on without thinking about it, as a sort of "free" way to make things look 3D, we can just end up piling on a ton of lines that don't really do anything. They end up being dead weight.

Instead, the most valuable way to use contour lines is actually what we introduced in the form intersections exercise - to use them to define the way in which two forms intersect and relate to one another in 3D space. This has all the benefits of the first kind of contour line, while also defining a relationship where if one of those forms feels three dimensional, it helps the other to feel three dimensional - which then cycles back into the first, and back into the second. It's a cycle of reinforcement.

That is why we stress the specific use of the sausage method where we construct simple sausages and define the joints between them with contour lines, rather than placing those contour lines anywhere else along their lengths. Note how in the diagram, it specifically says not to place the contour lines anywhere along their lengths.

Now I noticed that you did use the sausage method to varying degrees in some constructions, with some straying quite a bit. For example, in this dog construction you more or less went your own way, especially with the back leg. You may not have intended to, but there are two main issues that come into play here:

• You didn't stick completely to simple sausages. Remember that the sausage segments help us achieve a base structure that maintains a balance between the solidity of the structure and its fluidity. It's easy to lean too far one way or the other, with a structure that feels three dimensional but stiff, or gestural but flat. Once you've got that base structure in place, you can always build upon it with additional masses.

• In that particular example, the way in which you built on top of the leg structures focused much more on flat shapes rather than building up new, solid, three dimensional structures. You handled this somewhat better in other drawings - like this cat - in that you've defined complete, enclosed forms rather than just partial shapes working off the existing silhouettes. There is still an issue - those additional masses have these random corners that occur seemingly randomly, creating a sort of "sausage in a bun" appearance. As shown here, it's better to allow those forms to kind of wrap/twist around the existing structure, with more gradual transitions if there's no specific form causing that corner.

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.

One last thing before we finish off this critique - I'm generally pretty happy with how you're approaching your head constructions, though try to apply the specific elements in this explanation more directly - down to the specific shape of the eye sockets, which actually has a wedge shape in between the sockets to allow for the muzzle, and a flat top across which the brow ridge can rest.

Taking it a step further, instead of drawing an iconic little eye when figuring out the top and bottom lids, it can help force us to think about how the top and bottom eyelids wrap around the eyeball if we draw them separately, as their own additional masses as shown here.

Anyway! I've highlighted a few things for you to work on and keep in mind, but as a whole I'm pleased with your progress. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete.