I am glad to hear that you feel satisfied in getting this far. It is certainly an achievement, and something to be proud of. As to the issues you're running into - the point about wrapping forms around one another is something I actually some pretty concrete advice on, which will be the major focus of this critique. I can tell you now, there will be revisions - but I think that I can definitely help you push yourself in the right direction.

Starting with your organic forms with contour lines, these are coming along pretty well. There is definitely room for improvement, but the two main points that are important to me - having the forms slump and sag over one another in a realistic fashion that reflects the effects of gravity, and considering the way in which the shadows themselves are cast upon surfaces that are not flat, but rather rounded and turning, are things that you are clearly thinking a great deal about, and it shows.

For now I have just one thing to call out - on your first page, the way you're drawing your shadows has them coming out quite cleanly, but this does get a lot messier on the second page. If you're not already, it's important that you outline your shadows with your usual pen first, allowing you to design them intentionally, then fill them in more carefully with a thicker pen or a brush pen. Don't jump right in drawing them with the brush pen. If this is the process that you are following, then just take more care along the edges, as that second page does tend to have much messier edges on the shadows than the first page.

Now, in regards to your animal constructions, we're going to talk about three main areas:

• Your use of additional masses

• Head construction

• And a little about fur/hair.

For the additional masses, the main problem here is that the way in which you're drawing them is very... for lack of a better word, blobby. This is a result of them being made up primarily of outward curves. As we build up our constructions, there are basically two tools we have to use in order to define how the forms we add relate to the existing structure in 3D space, and which tool we use depends on the nature of that relationship. If the new form is interpenetrating the existing structure (like how we fit the sausages together when laying down the base structure of the legs), we use contour lines in a similar fashion to the form intersections in Lesson 2. Those contour lines define the joint between them, as though we were welding together pieces of metal, with the contour line demarking the weld line itself.

If however we have a mass that is wrapping around the existing structure, then everything is achieved through the design of the silhouette itself. 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. 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.

As shown in the diagram, we use inward curves and sharp corners - both forms of complexity (whereas outward curves and soft/rounded transitions are much simpler) to convey that something is pressing up against the mass. This is why yours feel flat - all you're using are outward curves, so rather than having forms that are engaging with one another in 3D space, they feel more like flat shapes being pasted on top of one another.

Furthermore, as soon as a mass is added to your construction, it becomes part of the existing structure. So for example, here these masses are overlapping one another in two dimensions, but in 3D space it's as if they're entirely ignoring one another. As soon as one has been added, the next needs to account for it and wrap around it as well, wherever they make contact.

This also means that additional contour lines - like the ones we see here aren't terribly useful - although that one's not on you, I know the current intro video (which is quite old now) shows a similar use of contour lines. I've discovered through doing critiques more recently that adding contour lines in this way is unhelpful, but moreover they can actually convince the student that they're able to "fix" a mass after it's been drawn, leading them to put less focus into the design of that mass's silhouette. But alas, the silhouette holds all the cards, and requires all of our focus.

So, as you build up your masses, consider these kinds of intentional shapes. You can see what I mean as I've drawn here on another student's work. Note:

• The very specific use of sharp corners right along the edge where we wrap around the existing structure, leading right into inward curves to wrap around it.

• Also, note that I'm not just adding masses where they impact the silhouette of the structure - I'm also thinking about the pieces "inbetween", as these help to define the way in which all of these forms are going to fit together, making them feel more grounded and solid.

Just for the sake of giving you more examples, here's another similar demonstration I provided for another student. Note how the forms pile on top of one another. Also, to be clear - you don't have to draw the entirety of the mass's silhouette in one go. You can draw it section by section, and you should stop and lift your pen when you hit a sharp corner, since the trajectory change sharply (as per the principles of markmaking from Lesson 1).

Onto the next point - head construction. Lesson 5 has a lot of different strategies for constructing heads, between the various demos. Given how the course has developed, and how I'm finding new, more effective ways for students to tackle certain problems. So not all the approaches shown are equal, but they do have their uses. As it stands, as explained at the top of the tiger demo page (here), the current approach that is the most generally useful, as well as the most meaningful in terms of these drawings all being exercises in spatial reasoning, is what you'll find here on the informal demos page.

There are a few key points to this approach:

• The specific shape of the eyesockets - the specific pentagonal shape allows for a nice wedge in which the muzzle can fit in between the sockets, as well as a flat edge across which we can lay the forehead area.

• This approach focuses heavily on everything fitting together - no arbitrary gaps or floating elements. This allows us to ensure all of the different pieces feel grounded against one another, like a three dimensional puzzle.

• We have to be mindful of how the marks we make are cuts along the curving surface of the cranial ball - working in individual strokes like this (rather than, say, drawing the eyesocket with an ellipse) helps a lot in reinforcing this idea of engaging with a 3D structure.

Try your best to employ this method when doing constructional drawing exercises using animals in the future, as closely as you can. Sometimes it seems like it's not a good fit for certain heads, but with a bit of finagling it can still apply pretty well. To demonstrate this for another student, I found the most banana-headed rhinoceros I could, and threw together this demo.

And lastly, let's talk for just a few moments about fur. Admittedely the way you're approaching fur right now is simply too quick - you're executing your marks without enough thought and planning. This is common, because students have a tendency to attack the problems that require a lot of lines more quickly, giving each individual mark less time. This is actually something we discuss back in Lesson 1's ghosted planes exercise, in its 'purpose' section. Of course, when you think about it, this is obviously incorrect. We do not allocate time based on how much time we have in a given sitting, and how many different marks it must be spread out across. We allocate time based on the complexity of the subject matter, and if that demands that we must spread it out across multiple sittings and days, then that is precisely what we must do in order to uphold our end of the bargain. That is, the fact that students have the singular responsibility to give themselves as much time as they work through these exercises to construct each form, draw each shape, and execute each mark to the best of their individual ability.

Fur, especially when we build it up along the edge of the construction's silhouette, is all about creating a more seamless extension of that silhouette. That generally means ensuring that our strokes rise off the silhouette of the existing form, and that we don't leave any needless gaps between our lines. As we can see here your marks are haphazard - they cross back over the silhouette freely, they leave ample gaps, and they generally feel more like a bunch of arbitrary lines rather than a cohesive, solid construction.

Now, we do have some leeway - while I'll generally design a intentional tufts (like those shown along the silhouette here), I do put in the odd lone stroke that isn't part of a tuft, so it's not necessarily a hard rule. Each of these are however intentional, and your big shortcoming here is that you're relying on a lot of randomness. You're not designing, you're just kind of hoping for the best.

This is not an uncommon mistake, and I'm going to provide you with one last demonstration I made from another student's work. I took their original drawing which was similarly haphazard and scribbly, and eliminated the vast majority of the fur marks, replacing them with my own here.

As you can see, mine still reads as being "furry", but what I'm not trying to do is copy my reference perfectly. That's never the goal in this course. Rather, the reference gives us something to then convey to the viewer - as though we're allowed to see the source material, but we have to describe it to them through visual means. Giving the impression that an animal has fur does not require nearly as many marks. Now, if it did, we would still be required to give each and every one as much time as it would require - but I imagine it'll be far less harrowing to put down the bare minimum to get the point across, which is all that's really needed here.

With that, I'll assign some revisions below, so you can work towards applying what I've shared here.