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

Starting with your organic forms I can see that you're working towards the characteristics of simple sausages that are introduced here, and some of these forms are spot on. I did notice that every form on the top row of this page has one end larger than the other, try to keep the ends more even. I've drawn over one of these forms as an example.

On the same image you'll see that I've added some ellipses to the ends of some of your forms. Remember that these ellipses are no different from the contour curves, in that they're all just contour lines running along the surface of the form. It's just that when the tip faces the viewer, we can see all the way around the surface, resulting in a full ellipse rather than just a partial curve. In cases where the end s pointing away from us, there would be no ellipse at all. Take a look at this breakdown of the different ways in which our contour lines can change the way in which the sausage is perceived - note how the contour curves and the ellipses are always consistent, giving the same impression of which ends are facing towards the viewer and which are facing away.

It is good to see that you're experimenting with varying the degree of your contour curves, though you appear reluctant to push them wider than a certain point, so I'd encourage you to include some wider contour curves when you practice this exercise in your warm ups. 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.

Moving on to your insect constructions, your work is honestly very well done. You're starting each construction with simple solid forms and building onto those basic structures piece by piece, demonstrating a strong understanding of how all these pieces exist in 3D space and connect together with specific relationships.

I've been using these lesson 4 critiques as an opportunity to share with students the distinction between actions we take in 2D space - where we're just thinking about drawing lines on a flat page and not necessarily considering whether or not they directly impact the illusion we're trying to convey - and actions we take in 3D space, where we are actively thinking of every new addition as a complete, self-enclosed form, that exists in 3D space with the other forms around it. Actions we can take that respect and reinforce the illusion, rather than contradicting and undermining it.

Where I run into trouble, however, is when a student... already considers most of their actions in three dimensions. It's not a problem because it leaves me without something to say (though that can be a problem), but it puts me in a position of weighing whether not mentioning it may cause such issues to come up later, since it was never directly addressed (especially as Uncomfortable is overhauling the lesson material, eventually planning on incorporating it but for now really just addressing this as a "free preview of future concepts" for those on the official critique track).

You are indeed doing this correctly in most places, and it's great to see- but I am going to take a moment just to make sure you understand why it's correct. And for that, I'm going to use some prewritten text:

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.

Fortunately you've avoided cutting back inside the silhouette of forms you have already drawn, which is great. I did spot a few areas where you'd added an extension to a form's silhouette with a one off line or partial shape, not quite providing enough information for us to understand how these additions actually connect to the existing structure in 3D space. I've made some notes on your crustacean construction here in green where you've done really well, and in red where I've made some changes to reinforce the 3D illusion.

The changes made were the following:

• I've "drawn through" the far side eye and antennae, so that they are complete forms rather than partial shapes. We can then clarify the overlaps with selective use of line weight. Drawing though all your forms and including parts that are obscured in your reference image will also help to reinforce your understanding of 3D space.

• On some of your pages parts of your construction don't fit on the page. It is fine if you can't fit the whole construction on the page, as in general drawing large is a good thing, it makes it easier to think through the spatial reasoning puzzles involved with these constructions while encouraging students to engage their whole arm. However, instead of running parts of the construction off the page as pairs of lines, which leaves the form open-ended, it helps to cap off the form so it has a clearly defined complete silhouette.

• Sometimes it looks like you make a quick little extension to one of your forms using a single line, I've noted an example on one of the legs and redrawn this extension as a complete form instead.

So, 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. I'm happy to see that you've been using the sausage method as introduced here, pretty consistently and effectively. It's not uncommon for students to be aware of the sausage method 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.

One final note before I wrap this up. Your work shows an awareness of using line weight as a tool to clarify overlaps as discussed here, but I also see additional line weight being used in a few places that seem somewhat arbitrary. Try to restrict additional line weight to localised areas where overlaps occur, and do not be tempted to try to use line weight to correct or hide mistakes, going back over lines in this manner tends to make your intially smooth and confident lines wobblier, which undermines the solidity of the construction somewhat.

Overall you're doing a great job. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete.