Hi there I'll be handling your lesson 2 critique.

You're making good progress towards understanding the concepts introduced in this lesson, below I'll be listing some things I notice that may help you achieve better results when you try these exercises again in the future.

• Your arrows are off to a good start, I'd suggest focusing on trying to keep your arrows flowing smoothly a bit more because currently you have some spots where bulging is occurring. Other than that I'd also suggest trying to experiment with foreshortening more, you make good use of it with the arrow itself but could use it in the spaces between curves of the arrow more. By utilizing foreshortening in both ways you'll really sell the illusion of an arrow moving through 3D space as discussed here.

• Some of your organic forms with contours are looking a bit too complex. Remember that our goal when making these forms is to keep both ends roughly the same size, and to avoid any pinching, bloating, or stretching along the length of the form, you can read more on this concept here. It looks like you're trying to shift the degree of your contours which is great, some of your contour lines and ellipses are looking a bit stiffy and wobbly however, remember that accuracy will come with time so really try to make sure you're drawing everything as confidently as you can after giving it proper planning time with the ghosting method.

• When it comes to texture you're focusing largely on outlines and negative space rather than cast shadows. This makes it difficult to imply information which is useful when we want to create gradients and focal points in more complex pieces. I do think you're on the right track, it takes quite a bit of experimentation to get comfortable with texture and to learn what to focus on, for a reminder on the importance of cast shadows read here.

• If you feel like you don't fully grasp form intersections just yet don't worry, right now this exercise is just meant to get students to start thinking about how their forms relate to one another in 3D space, and how to define those relationships on the page, we'll be going over them more in upcoming lessons. Your ellipses get a bit wobbly, but other than that your forms are looking solid in this exercise, good work.

• When trying the organic intersections exercise again I have a few suggestions. The first being that you should try to simplify your form pile, you're attempting to go quite complex with complex forms and it results in things looking squished and flat. I'd also like you to draw through all of your forms and to not use light sketchy underdrawing lines, by drawing through all of your forms you'll help develop your understanding of 3D space. (the same principle we used when we drew our boxes applies here basically) Lastly you can push your shadows further, right now they're mostly hugging the form creating them rather than being cast in a particular direction, try setting up a consistent light source to the upper left or right rather than directly above as this can be more difficult to work with. One final note for your forms here is that the ellipses on the end of your forms are too small, and don't really follow you contours lines, this was prevalent in earlier cases but are really noticeable here.

With all that said and done this was a solid submission overall. You do have things to work on but I believe you understand the majority of concepts here and just need more mileage to really refine your skills, so I'll be marking your submission as complete and moving you to the next lesson.

To quickly answer your questions.

• Both these scans and the pictures are workable, I know I personally (as well as a few others) prefer pictures just because it's easier on the eyes, but whatever is easier for you in this case.

• Brush pens take a bit of work to get used too but are really fun, I hope you enjoy it.

• We don't recommend you tackle the cylinder challenge just yet, while they are introduced in this lesson they're meant to be more of an introduction to working with them and not something we expect you to nail right away. (Like intersections and texture) You'll be better equipped and achieve better results tackling the cylinder challenge after lesson 5, you're also less likely to burn out after having just had to do the box challenge. If you do want to tackle a challenge however, you could start up the texture challenge. The texture challenge is optional and something that you could work on slowly as you go through the rest of the lessons, definitely don't tackle it all at once like the box challenge.

Anyways, remember to keep doing previous exercises as warm ups and good luck in lesson 3!