I'm not sure if you wanted the follow along drawings added but the 5 follow along drawings are at the bottom too. Also wanted to add that I had to take a break from drawabox for a few months due to life events and getting back into this recently, so if there needs to be a revisit to a prior lesson or challenge please let me know. Thank you
Starting with your organic forms with contour curves, you've done a good job of sticking to simple sausage forms, and your contour curves are drawn confidently, wrapping around the form fairly well. The only issue I noticed is that the degree of your contour curves appears to remain consistent throughout the entirety of the form, rather than shifting naturally over the course of the form as demonstrated here.
Moving onto your actual insect drawings, it stands out to me that you appear to be extremely focused on texture and detail, as well as generally attempting to create a pretty picture as your end result. You also tend to draw flat shapes rather than solid forms, which is the key issue we'll be dealing with here.
First and foremost, it's important to emphasize just what we're doing here. These drawings are exercises, not in any way different from the kinds of exercises we've done up until this point. Each one is an exercise in spatial reasoning, in understanding how to construct and combine solid, three dimensional forms in 3D space. As such, the first thing we need to do is understand that we're not drawing flat shapes on a page. We're drawing 3D forms.
On this page, I've laid out a bunch of ways in which you've not quite considered how the things you're drawing are in fact 3D forms, not just marks or shapes on a page.
Along the top of that page, I talk about how you started out with a much longer form, and then decided to entirely ignore it, tucking into a much smaller alternative. When applying constructional drawing, this isn't an option. Every form we place within our 3D world exists, and it must be dealt with - it cannot simply be ignored.
Constructional drawing comes in two flavours - there's additive construction, which is where we put forms down, then build upon them with yet more forms, gradually developing greater levels of complexity, then there's subtractive construction, where we cut back into the forms we've already put down.
The thing with subtractive construction is that beginners to construction as a whole will often treat this as you did - cutting back into the shape as its its on the page. This unfortunately reinforces the idea that we're simply drawing shapes on a page, and entirely undermines the illusion we're trying to create, that what we've drawn is three dimensional. In order to maintain that illusion, we have to take our three dimensional form and divide it into three dimensional sections, doing so using contour lines to define the border between them as shown here in this demo I made for another student. We can then designate one section as being positive space, and the other as being negative space (an empty void). This respects the three dimensional nature of both resulting forms.
When it comes to the legs of your insects, I'm noticing that in most cases you're applying the sausage method fairly well, simply without actually applying every aspect of that technique. You're neglecting to define the relationship between the sausage forms (which is demonstrated in the middle of that diagram, where we place a contour line at the joint between two sausage forms). Additionally, remember that when it comes to making forms feel solid and three dimensional, the key is maintaining a simple silhouette - you've done that in many cases, but there are some examples such as the legs along the left side of this page where those sausage forms end up quite wobbly and complex.
Now I think there's enough here for you to work towards applying, so I'll leave my critique at that. Remember above all that our focus is on establishing the illusion of solid form - not to create pretty nor detailed drawings. If the underlying construction does not appear 3D, then your detail will fall flat.
Next Steps:
I'd like to see the following:
1 more page of organic forms with contour curves - make sure to shift the degree of your contour curves as demonstrated in the critique
5 more insect drawings, focusing on construction only with no detail or texture whatsoever. Use the combination of form to take you as far as it can in building out your insects, and don't forget the steps involved in the sausage method for constructing legs, and generally defining the spatial relationships between your forms. You will likely want to review the material in the lesson before doing these additional pages to ensure that it is fresh in your mind while you work.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/jNgyy8vmSwNyoUPH7
Here are my revisions, most of them are me trying to construct the same pose the image was showing. The dragon fly was the only one where I tried to construct it from a different perspective.
Alrighty, this is a big move in the right direction. I especially liked this one, as it shows a lot more thought going into the relationships between the forms. I did notice however that you still didn't reinforce the intersection between sausage forms when constructing your legs. This step is extremely important (it's demonstrated in the middle of this diagram, as it reinforces the illusion that both forms exist in 3D space.
The only drawing that was especially weak was the caterpillar at the end, which admittedly is a pretty different challenge to tackle compared to the others. That said, the key issues are that you didn't construct the legs along the bottom as individual forms, instead somehow extending them off the silhouette of the main body. This is an act that focuses on manipulating things in two dimensions, as lines on your page, rather than applying additive construction, piling on more forms. This is a pretty quick demonstration not tied to any specific reference, but notice how each leg-thing is made up of individual forms that, were every other element in the drawing removed, would still stand on its own.
All in all, there are two main things you need to work on:
Your use of the sausage method in its entirety
Observing your references more carefully in certain cases - this one was constructed better in terms of solid forms, but the proportions are pretty far off, which shows that you were likely drawing it more from memory rather than looking at your reference frequently, only looking at your drawing long enough to put down a single form at a time.
That said, these are all things you can continue to work on into the next lesson, as they will be just as relevant there. As such, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete.
I do have one last thing to recommend however, as you continue to move forwards - when drawing contour lines, or really any mark, think about what you're attempting to achieve with that stroke. Don't ever draw something just because you feel like that's what you're supposed to do - this can happen often when adding an arbitrary number of contour lines. Consider what task you need your mark to accomplish, and whether or not that mark is actually necessary, or if another mark might do a better job. Contour lines suffer from diminished returns, where your first may have a meaningful impact, your second less so, and your third even less. Different kinds of contour lines are also more effective than others - for instance, the one I was pointing out as missing in your use of the sausage method, which defines the intersection in space between two sausage forms, is considerably more effective because of how it defines how two three dimensional forms relate to one another in 3D space, in turn making that illusion much stronger.
So, while drawing animals in the next lesson, don't put any marks down without thinking about what they're meant to accomplish.
Next Steps:
Move onto lesson 5.
These are what I use when doing these exercises. They usually run somewhere in the middle of the price/quality range, and are often sold in sets of different line weights - remember that for the Drawabox lessons, we only really use the 0.5s, so try and find sets that sell only one size.
Alternatively, if at all possible, going to an art supply store and buying the pens in person is often better because they'll generally sell them individually and allow you to test them out before you buy (to weed out any duds).
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