Hello Struggler, I'll be the teaching assistant handling your lesson 4 critique.

Starting with your organic forms it looks like you're working towards the characteristics of simple sausages that are introduced here, although there are a number of places where the ends get pointy or flattened, or are uneven sizes, or there is subtle (but noticeable) pinching or bulging along the midsection of the form. Make sure that you're drawing sausages that are essentially two equally sized spheres connected by a tube of consistent width.

You're keeping the line work of your forms pretty smooth and confident, which is great. Some (not all, but still a significant number) of your contour curves show signs of hesitation. As introduced here in the principles of markmaking, you're top priority should be to have your marks flow smoothly, as accuracy will improve over time with practice. I can see from your previous submissions that you've had a bit of trouble with hesitating on some of your lines before, so I think you might benefit from reading this comment from Uncomfortable, where he talks more about how we use the ghosting method to tackle hesitation.

There is some variation with the degree of your contour curves, but it is quite subtle, and you seem to be shifting the degree randomly so I'm not sure if it is deliberate. Keep in mind that the degree of your contour lines should be shifting wider as we slide along the sausage form, moving farther away from the viewer. This is also influenced by the way in which the sausages themselves turn in space, but farther = wider is a good rule of thumb to follow. If you're unsure as to why that is, review the Lesson 1 ellipses video. You can also see a good example of how to vary your contour curves in this diagram showing the different ways in which our contour lines can change the way in which the sausage is perceived.

Moving on to your insect constructions, you're doing a good job of starting most of your constructions with simple solid forms, and there are some constructions like this June bug that demonstrate a clear understanding of how these volumes exist in 3D space.

Something that jumps out with a number of these constructions is the tendency to redraw lines, presumably to make corrections. If we take this spider as an example, almost every line has been drawn 2 or 3 times. The only place I'd expect to see multiple passes around one form is for ellipses, which we insist on students drawing around 2 full times before lifting the pen off the page, as this leans into the arm's natural tendency to make elliptical motions and helps to execute them smoothly and confidently. For anything other than an ellipse drawing around the form takes a different series of motions, so going over it again isn't helpful and will just make the construction messy and confusing.

In ending up with multiple lines representing the edges of the same form, the viewer is given a number of different possible interpretations. Regardless of which interpretation they choose to follow, there will always be another present there to contradict it, which ultimately undermines their suspension of disbelief and reminds them that they're looking at a flat, two dimensional drawing. Furthermore, the ghosting method emphasises the importance of making one mark only. Correcting mistakes isn't actually helpful, given that the end result of the exercise is far less relevant and significant than the actual process used to achieve it. Rather, having a habit of correcting your mistakes can lean into the idea of not investing as much time into each individual stroke, and so it's something that should be avoided in favour of putting as much time as is needed to executing each mark to the best of your current ability.

I think it is possible that some of the places where you'd gone back over your lines are an effort to add line weight. The most effective use of additional line weight, given the bounds and limitations of this course is to reserve it for clarifying overlaps as explained here, and restricting it to localised areas where these overlaps occur. What this keeps us from doing is adding line weight to more random places, or worse, attempting to correct or hide mistakes with additional line weight.

The next point relates to differentiating between the actions we can take when interacting with a construction, which fall into two groups:

• Actions in 2D space, where we're just putting lines down on a page, without necessarily considering the specific nature of the relationships between the forms they're meant to represent and the forms that already exist in the scene.

• Actions in 3D space, where we're actually thinking about how each form we draw exists in 3D space, and how it relates to the existing 3D structures already present. We draw them in a manner that actually respects the 3D nature of what's already there, and even reinforces it.

Because we're drawing on a flat piece of paper, we have a lot of freedom to make whatever marks we choose, but many of those marks would 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.

For example, I've marked on your ant in red where it looks like you cut back inside the silhouette of a form you had already drawn. On the same image I marked in blue where you'd extended off existing forms using partial, flat shapes, not quite providing enough information for us to understand how they actually connect to the existing structure in 3D space. And I've used purple to circle a number of areas where I couldn't tell if the silhouette had been cut back or extended, but either way it undermines the solidity of the construction.

Instead, when we want to build on our construction or alter something we add new 3D forms to the existing structure. Forms with their own complete 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 understanding that everything we draw is 3D, and therefore needs to be treated as such in order for both you and 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. As Uncomfortable has 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.

The next thing I wanted to talk about is leg construction. It looks like you tried out a few different strategies for constructing legs. There are examples like this ant where it looks like you were attempting to use the sausage method, but had didn't stick to simple sausages, along with quite a few constructions like this spider where you’d used ellipses instead, which makes the construction stiff. It's not uncommon for students to be aware of the sausage method as introduced here, but to decide that the legs they're looking at don't actually seem to look like a chain of sausages, so they use some other strategy.

The key to keep in mind here is that the sausage method is not about capturing the legs precisely as they are - it is about laying in a base structure or armature that captures both the solidity and the gestural flow of a limb in equal measure, where the majority of other techniques lean too far to one side, either looking solid and stiff or gestural but flat. Once in place, we can then build on top of this base structure with more additional forms as shown in these examples here, here, and in this ant leg demo and also here on this dog leg demo as this method should be used throughout lesson 5 too.

The last point I need to touch on is texture and detail. I can see that on this fly and this velvet worm you've gone to considerable effort to describe the surface texture of the insect. Something to be aware of, is that putting detail all over the construction creates quite a bit of visual noise, and leaves the viewer unsure where to look. Instead, we can control the detail density focusing on areas where the texture breaks the silhouette or where the textural forms cast deeper shadows. By leaving the interior sparse this helps to convey the roundness of the big underlying construction forms. I've done a bit of digital editing on your fly to show how this might work. We can actually give the viewer more information by putting down less ink.

On the whole, you're not far off doing a good job here, and I can see your 3D thinking developing. I have given you a number of things to work on here and I think it is going to be in your best interests to tackle some of these issues by completing a couple of extra constructions before moving on to the next lesson.

In brief:

• Use the ghosting method for every line, and resist the temptation to redraw lines.

• Try to draw complete new forms when you want to build on your construction or change something.

• Use the sausage method for constructing legs.

Please complete 2 pages of insect constructions.