Overall, I can definitely see your brain working through some complex problems throughout this lesson, and I can also see a fair bit of growth coming from it. There are both strengths and weaknesses I can see here, but as a whole I'm pleased with the progress you've made.

Starting with the organic intersections, there's one key issue I'm noticing here: it seems you're making somewhat inconsistent use of line weight and cast shadows. It isn't uncommon for students to have their understanding of these two distinct tools get somewhat muddied, so let's clarify what each of them is for, and how they're used.

Line weight exists specifically to clarify the overlaps between specific forms in specific, localized areas. It's generally kept subtle, like a whisper to the viewer's subconscious rather than a loud, obvious shout - so we keep it pretty light. Line weight can run along the silhouette of a given form, but because we keep it to localized areas, we generally add it in fairly short bursts, doing so confidently using the ghosting method to have the mark remain fluid and to taper the ends so they flow back into the original linework more seamlessly. Here's an example of what I mean.

Additionally, line weight cannot alter the silhouette of forms - it can only emphasize them. As soon as you start veering off that existing silhouette, you start pulling and pushing that shape, in ways that alters the construction without working in 3D space. This as a result undermines the viewer's suspension of disbelief, because you're reminding them that what they're looking at is flat and two dimensional. While this isn't something I saw in your organic intersections, it is something I'll point out here and there in your animal constructions.

Cast shadows on the other hand can be as broad and heavy as we want, but they cannot cling to the silhouette of a given form. Instead, cast shadows are cast from one form onto another surface - even if that surface is some distance away. We can't have them floating arbitrarily in space, though that is the impression we tend to get when a student adds really thick line weight to a form. Because it's not subtle, the brain thinks cast shadow, but then fails to understand what surface it is sitting upon, resulting in a break in our suspension of disbelief.

The other thing to keep in mind with cast shadows is that they must abide by a consistent light source. You can't have one form in a scene cast a shadow to the left, and another cast a shadow to the right. That is also an issue I saw in various places in your organic intersections.

Moving onto your animal constructions, I'm going to skip down along your animals, pointing out issues as I come across them.

Starting with this bird, it's pretty normal to see issues in the first few drawings as the student gets up to speed. Here, there are a couple simple ones:

• It appears you're not drawing through any of your ellipses two full times before lifting your pen. You should be doing this for every ellipse you draw freehand in this course.

• If you look at the way in which you've drawn the feet, you've drawn an extremely complex silhouette in one go. Constructional drawing at its core is all about building things up from simple to complex. In this case, employing the sausage method would have allowed you to build out the leg and toes more effectively, one simple form at a time, which in turn would have helped you maintain a more solid result. As soon as you jump into drawing the whole complex silhouette from scratch, you're going to end up with a shape that flattens out. Of course, what we're learning throughout his course will help improve your ability to do that without ending up with a flat result, but the way we do that is by taking the time to construct everything from simple-to-complex right now.

While your earlier drawings - like this duckling didn't really follow any particular structured approach for head construction (resulting in the eye socket floating separately from the beak), I am pleased to see that you started to consider how to wedge those pieces together in this cat construction. Here there's definitely a much more solid overall impression due to how the eye socket, muzzle, cheekbone, brow ridge have clearly defined relationships with one another, and how that smooth cranial ball surface is being broken down into distinct planes. While you're not completely following the methodology explained here in the informal demos page, you're quite close and are definitely holding to the spirit of it.

This does of course vary from construction to construction, so I do recommend that you reread that informal demo explanation and in the future, try to hold to it more closely wherever possible. Cases like your horses appear to stray quite a bit from that approach, and as a result the head's solidity does suffer.

Jumping back to the duckling for a moment, I just wanted to remind you that when it comes to areas of solid black, in this course we're going to reserve them only for capturing cast shadows. If you see something like a black pupil, or something else that has a local colour or pattern, ignore it. By reserving filled black shapes just for one thing, we can communicate more clearly with the viewer because as soon as a filled black shape comes up, they'll know that it always represents a cast shadow. The goal always comes down to communicating as clearly as possible to the viewer.

Continuing on, I did notice a fair bit of inconsistency in terms of how you've been constructing your animals' legs. There are a number of places where you are very clearly making an effort to apply the sausage method for constructing your legs, but there are ways in which you deviate from them. For example, you aren't always sticking to the characteristics of simple sausages (though you frequently are trying to do so). There are issues like the midsection of the sausage form getting wider, or the ends getting stretched out instead of remaining properly circular. Keep working on nailing down that "simple" sausage structure.

There are also some places where you've added a contour line through the midsection of the sausage segment - remember that the sausage method diagram states you should only leave your contour lines for the joints between segments.

All things considered though, you are clearly making a conscious effort to apply the sausage method throughout your drawings, so that is very good to see. Just keep working on refining your approach. Drawing those simple sausage forms can be quite tricky, so pushing the use of the ghosting method and even slowing down your execution a little bit (while still maintaining a confident page) can help.

When looking at your use of the sausage method, I did notice that in some areas - like this horse's back leg - where you end up trying to reinforce the line weight of an entire set of forms, basically wrapping them all in a skin. Avoid this sort of thing in the future - it's very easy (and this happens in the upper-left of the crop I linked you to) to end up redefining the silhouette of your forms when you try to add line weight to too many things all at once. You'll remember that in my critique of your lesson 4 work, I mentioned that we need to avoid modifying the silhouettes of the forms we've already drawn, because it'll remind the viewer that what they're looking at is just a series of lines on a flat page. Instead, any alteration must be done through the addition of solid, enclosed, 3D forms.

For the most part, you are working in this manner, working additively and respecting the 3D illusion you're creating. There just are some places where you got a little too relaxed, and slipped up.

To that point, I did want to mention is that when it comes to the additional masses you build up along your animals' bodies, you're largely doing a pretty good job. You appear to be thinking consciously about how the additional form's silhouette needs to be designed to capture how it wraps around the underlying structure. While I think there's still plenty of room for improvement here, you're moving in the right direction. From there, it's just a matter of practice.

The last thing I wanted to call out is in regards to texture - specifically your approach to fur. In cases like your duckling, or your sitting cat, you ended up approaching fur/feathers/etc in a surt of quantity-over-quality manner. That is, your focus appeared to be to pile on as much of this jagged texture as you could along the silhouette of your forms. Unfortunately, that's the opposite of how to best approach capturing fur, or really any kind of texture.

Instead, it all comes down to how you design each tuft of fur that you add. The second you start focusing on quantity, you'll allow yourself to fall into auto-pilot, creating repeating patterns of strokes that stand out to the viewer. If however you take the time to design each tuft - even if it means you add only 10% as much fur - that 10% will be vastly more impactful and will convey a stronger impression to the viewer. When it comes to designing your tufts of fur, take a look at these notes from the lesson. You'll notice, upon closer inspection, that my tufts aren't repeating - each one is drawn intentionally, controlled by conscious thought rather than automatic behaviour.

It all comes down very much to being in control.

I've laid out quite a few things for you to read here, but as a whole I do feel you're moving in the right direction. I am going to mark this lesson as complete, but be sure to read over my feedback here (multiple times, since it's well over 1500 words and may be difficult to absorb all at once), and work towards applying these points in your own practice.