11:37 PM, Monday December 6th 2021
I'm just going to jump right in and say that your work this time around is definitely better. That said, what I'm seeing here is a mix - there are a lot of places where you're doing really well, demonstrating strong, well developing spatial reasoning skills. There are also places, however, where you're breaking some of the rules we've gone over previously. I suspect this is because while your spatial reasoning skills have developed well, you're relying on those to get you through, rather than the specific techniques, methodologies and tools that the course has laid out.
A good example of this is this giraffe. The head construction comes out feeling really solid, and you've built up all these masses along its structure to gradually build it out, with all the pieces remaining grounded against one another. That's great - but what you didn't do was apply the specific methodology that not only available in the lesson, but that I also specifically pointed you to in my previous critique.
There are definitely places where you're still kind of lax about following certain instructions, and you're compensating for it with your existing skills. While it's great that your spatial reasoning skills have developed nicely, the important thing to keep in mind is that this course's purpose is to show you how to keep strengthening them. So let's look at some ways in which your approach can be improved to help you continue to develop those skills as effectively as we can manage. As I've already mentioned the head construction approach, I won't continue to beat that horse.
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Avoid changing up your line thickness between constructional steps. We can see this pretty prominently in your page of albatrosses. Here your initial marks are much lighter and fainter, and as you build things up, but they get visibly heavier as you build on top of the initial structures. This creates the impression that the initial masses (like that cranial ball on the left drawing) are not actually solid structures. In the future, try drawing those initial masses with the same overall thickness. There's no need to go crazy with line thickness, but avoid drawing things to be purposely faint. Instead, focus only on draw those marks with confidence.
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As discussed both in my critique of your Lesson 4 work and your previous Lesson 5 submission, it's critical that you not cut into the silhouettes of forms you've already added to your construction. While you're not doing it all the time, the fact that it is still occurring means that you're consciously choosing to do so - or that you're not consciously choosing to avoid it. Either way, the previous point where you're drawing your initial masses too lightly definitely contributes to this, and we can see the issue on your albatross head construction here. When we draw those earlier masses more faintly, we often don't end up treating them as though they're solid structures, and so we'll cut across them more freely if we're not thinking about it. I most often see this occurring with your head constructions, for example in this dog head and this kangaroo head.
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When it comes to using the sausage method, you're kind of inconsistent - though I can see that you are attempting to use it, although not always with all of its properties intact. For example, you frequently forget to define the joint between sausages with a contour line (which is prominently show in the middle of the sausage method diagram. You also have some areas where you attempt to represent the entire leg in a single sausage, like in this dog. While it's not exactly a hard rule, the sausage method is generally used to represent each anatomical segment of the limb, and in most cases this is preferable since it helps us focus on some of the subtler complexities of how the different segments bend one way, or the other.
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Also when you're building upon those sausage structures, or adding additional masses of any sort, make sure you avoid putting corners in arbitrary places on those silhouettes. As shown here, and as explained in this diagram from my previous critique, corners and inward curves are the kind of complexity that only occur when we actually press up against another structure or form. If we don't have another defined form to make contact with, then we're better off using a sort of "S-curve" instead of a sharp corner, as it's a more gentle transition that doesn't introduce the same kind of complexity to the silhouette that can undermine the solidity of our overall construction. For what it's worth, along this dog's torso, you did a good job with building up the other additional masses, although you shouldn't be afraid of letting those masses overlap one another. Every time a new mass is added to the structure, it becomes part of that structure - so any other mass that follows then has to wrap around everything else that is already present.
Ultimately you are making progress, and you are moving in the right direction. You just need to be aware of your biggest shortcoming: I suspect that you're prone to going back into auto-pilot. When you're actively conscious of what you're doing, you show a clear effort towards applying the specific things I've called out. But at other times, you seem to just be doing whatever your instincts dictate - some of which is definitely correct, alongside some significant holes.
I'm going to assign some revisions below. This is not a full revision I'm asking for, as before - just additional work that is covered as part of what you paid for this critique.
Next Steps:
Please submit 4 additional pages of animal constructions, focusing on what I've pointed out in this critique, as well as in previous feedback I've given you.