Hi Mike, hope you are well. I’ll be handling your lesson 2 critique.

Starting with your Organic Arrows: Your lines look smooth and confident, well done. It looks like you understand that the arrow is supposed to get wider as it gets closer to the viewer, but it is a bit hit and miss whether you manage to apply this principle. Sometimes you manage to do this- https://d15v304a6xpq4b.cloudfront.net/lesson_images/011d064f.jpg but I see more examples that look like this- https://d15v304a6xpq4b.cloudfront.net/lesson_images/0f7c806c.jpg Try to avoid arrows that get wider and then narrower again, as it breaks the illusion of depth.

Moving on to your Organic Forms, I’m pleased to see your confident mark making continues. You’re mostly doing a pretty decent job of sticking to simple organic forms, with both ends round, evenly sized, and a consistent width without pinching or bulging. Mostly. I’ve put a few notes on your work here https://imgur.com/a/arQirEs Looking at your contour lines and contour ellipses, they are quite well aligned, but you’re not varying them. Or at least not in a way that suggests an understanding of the information they are supposed to describe. This image https://imgur.com/a/yDBbayD shows some possible variations of contour curves on organic forms. There are also some photos of a slinky pinned in the lesson 2 channel, that show contour ellipses changing as the slinky moves through space, I suggest you check them out.

Looking at your Texture Analysis you’ve done well at focusing on shadow shapes and (with the exception of the corn study) have managed to avoid relying on outlines to describe your textures. You’re making a pretty good transition on your gradients, great work.

Dissections are a mixed bunch. The first thing I saw was that you crossed or scribbled a couple of them out. Please don’t do this in your Drawabox homework. If you think you made a mistake just leave it and move on. I think your bee hive came out well, you did a good job of wrapping the texture around the form and breaking the silhouette, and although I think you may have started it by outlining the forms, you put some nice shadow shapes down and it reads pretty well. I also thought your oreo came out pretty cool. Your cobblestone and pebbles look like you outlined forms and filled in the gaps, rather than thinking about how the forms cast shadows. Your feathers, alligator skin, and pine cone are drawn explicitly, using lines. Try to carry forward what you practised in the texture analysis, as the same principles apply. Good work overall though, nice observations.

Form Intersections. Your forms look solid, with shallow consistent foreshortening, like they all exist in the same space, well done. Remember to construct your cones around a minor axis line though, like your cylinders. It's quite common for people to feel like they don't fully grasp the form intersections exercise, if you feel like you may fall into this category try not to stress too much. This exercise is just meant to get students to start thinking about how their forms relate to one another in 3D space, and how to define those relationships on the page. We'll be going over them more in the upcoming lessons.

Organic Intersections. exercise you do a great job demonstrating that your sense of 3D space is developing as your forms begin to wrap around each other believably. You're keeping your forms reasonably simple and easy to work with which is a good strategy to help produce good results. What I said earlier about the contour curves on your organic forms applies here as well. The curves tell us how the forms sit in space, so pay attention to their degree. I'd like you to draw through all of your forms when doing this exercise again in the future, much like how we drew through our boxes we can gain a better understanding of how these forms rest in 3D space by making sure we draw through them in their entirety.

When it comes to your shadows you're pushing them enough so that they cast rather than just hugging the form that creates them which is a great start. Your shadows appear to be following a consistent light source, be sure to experiment with different angles and intensities when trying this exercise again in the future. I recommend pushing your light source to the top left or right corner of the page to start with, it's easier than working with a light directly above your form pile.

Mostly your work is well done, but I'd like to see you demonstrate an understanding of changing the degree of contour lines and ellipses on your organic forms, as looking at your newer lesson 4 submission, I can see it's still a problem there. Please submit 1 page of organic forms, half with contour lines, and half with contour ellipses. Vary the degree of your contour lines/ellipses to show how they sit in space https://imgur.com/a/QDpSVli and remember that the small ellipse shows which end(s) are facing the viewer as shown here https://imgur.com/a/yDBbayD