Starting with your organic forms with contour curves, it's really important that when you do one of these exercises, that you refer back to the instructions even if you feel you may remember what they were. Here in particular, you neglected to include the central minor axis line (which helps to align the contour curves), and in general the sausage shapes themselves are okay, but they definitely vary in terms of where and how closely they adhere to the characteristics of simple sausages. Many of them tend to get wider through into their midsection (althoug subtly), and some don't have entirely circular/spherical ends.

Now with that out of the way, I am by and large quite pleased with your work throughout the insect constructions for this lesson. There are some issues I'll touch upon, but all in all I think you're demonstrating a good grasp of how these forms exist in 3D space, and how they can be combined with one another to create solid, believable structures.

Despite being one of the earlier drawings, the whip scorpion is by far the strongest construction of the bunch. It does have its issues, but they're generally minor ones - for example, you applied some form shading to certain areas, though as discussed back in lesson 2, form shading should be left out of these drawings. In general, filled shapes should be reserved for cast shadows only.

Regardless, I'm quite pleased with how you've wrapped the segmentation around the abdomen, how you've established the relationships between the different forms (both the major masses and the various parts of the legs and pincers, and how the forms are all arranged to capture a surprisingly tricky camera angle.

The spider that follows is admittedly not nearly as strong, but it does serve as an opportunity to point out a common mistake. When constructing this spider, you drew the masses for the cephalothorax and the abdomen, and left a slight gap between them, later opting to create a sort of bridge between them. The issue here is that when employing constructional drawing, every single mark you draw effectively introduces a new complete 3D form to the structure. The marks we draw cannot manipulate the drawing as it exists in two dimensions, as this just serves to remind the viewer that what they're looking at is a flat drawing on a flat page. What you did to bridge between those two masses however was essentially taking the silhouettes of those forms (a 2D shape, basically the 2D manifestation of the forms), and extended them (again, in 2D space), across to connect the two shapes.

Make sure that when constructing anything in the future, every single step is completely grounded in 3D space. While we have incredible freedom when drawing to put down whatever marks we wish, it's rules like this that we must adhere to in order to maintain the illusion that the viewer is looking at a real, 3D object.

The point I mentioned before about ensuring that every filled shape we draw being reserved for cast shadows only comes into play in a number of places - both on that spider, as well as on this moth and on the coconut crab where you've mixed together cast shadows with actual objects or surfaces you perceived as being darker in their local colour (basically their colour when all lighting information is ignored). This has a tendency to make things quite muddy, because those filled shapes now have the possibility of signifying many different kinds of things. Reserving those filled shapes only for cast shadows makes things much clearer, and in general the rest of the drawing should be treated as though it is all the same flat colour with no variation.

Your ants are actually quite interesting, and I don't believe I've ever had anyone draw one flipped over. Admittedly seeing the construction here pushed a little further, as there is indeed a lot more complexity to the forms on its underbelly, specifically on the thorax where its legs connect there. In this regard, I think that drawing could have been taken much further.

Another thing I'm noticing in these drawings is that the linework, especially for the main masses, tends to be rather stiff and hesitant. There's a lot of slight wobbles and bumps to it, things that add a little complexity here and there. These basic initial masses must be drawn with confidence, maintaining a smooth, consistent stroke with no wobbling so as to maintain the illusion of solidity as effectively as possible. Those little wobbles all introduce the kind of complexity that can easily undermine that illusion.

I've pointed out that, and a couple other issues here:

• Along the ant's back, you appear to have random line weight variation. I'm not sure if that's because of the segmentation you've placed there, but it feels like it's a little more than that. I suspect you might be falling into the habit of trying to correct your mistakes. As a rule, if you slip up, do not try to correct it, as this will only draw attention to the area of the mistake. You want to be in full control over where the viewer looks and how their eyes move across the page. If it starts drifting towards the places where you piled on ink to hide things, then you're sacrificing an important tool.

• In the head, it appears as though you're cutting back across the silhouette of one of the forms you'd drawn. This falls right in there with what I said previously about only interacting with the forms you draw in three dimensions. The second you try and cut across a form's silhouette, you immediately undermine the illusion that your drawing is anything more than just a series of marks on the page. I explain this a little further in these notes.

As a whole I'm quite pleased with your results, but there are a number of things I've laid out here that you certainly need to get on top of. I am going to go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, but be sure to keep what I've mentioned here in mind as you continue onto the next lesson.