Hello Lenord, I'll be the teaching assistant handling your lesson 4 critique.

Starting with your organic forms most of these are reasonably close to the characteristics of simple sausages that are introduced here. There are some cases where the ends are different sizes, or get a little bit flattened or pointy, but it's clear that you understand what to aim for here.

The contour curves could do with a bit more attention. There are places where these curves are not well aligned and something that I think will help you with this is to use a central flow line as described in the exercise instructions. Like this.

You're getting a mixture of smooth confident contour curves, and some that come out a little stiff and hesitant. Make sure you're ghosting each one, and prioritising confidence over accuracy.

I can see that you're introducing some variation in the degree of your contour curves, though it isn't obvious whether this was done with deliberate intentions, or at random. Keep in mind that the degree of your contour lines should be shifting wider as we slide along the sausage form, moving farther away from the viewer. This is also influenced by the way in which the sausages themselves turn in space, but farther = wider is a good rule of thumb to follow. If you're unsure as to why that is, review the Lesson 1 ellipses video. You can see a good example of how to vary the degree of your contour curves in this breakdown of the different ways in which our contour lines can change the way in which the sausage is perceived.

Moving on to your insect constructions you're doing a good job of starting your constructions with simple solid forms and gradually building complexity piece by piece. You're showing a developing understanding of how the forms you draw exist in 3D space.

I have some points that should help you get more out of these constructional exercises in the future.

The first of these relates to differentiating between the actions we can take when interacting with a construction, which fall into two groups:

1 Actions in 2D space, where we're just putting lines down on a page, without necessarily considering the specific nature of the relationships between the forms they're meant to represent and the forms that already exist in the scene.

2 Actions in 3D space, where we're actually thinking about how each form we draw exists in 3D space, and how it relates to the existing 3D structures already present. We draw them in a manner that actually respects the 3D nature of what's already there, and even reinforces it.

Because we're drawing on a flat piece of paper, we have a lot of freedom to make whatever marks we choose, but many of those marks would contradict the illusion you're trying to create and remind the viewer that they're just looking at a series of lines on a flat piece of paper. In order to avoid this and stick only to the marks that reinforce the illusion we're creating, we can force ourselves to adhere to certain rules as we build up our constructions. Rules that respect the solidity of our construction.

In your lesson 3 critique ThatOneMushroomGuy introduced you to the following rule. Once you've put a form down on the page, do not attempt to alter its silhouette. Its silhouette is just a shape on the page which represents the form we're drawing, but its connection to that form is entirely based on its current shape. If you change that shape, you won't alter the form it represents - you'll just break the connection, leaving yourself with a flat shape. We can see this most easily in this example of what happens when we cut back into the silhouette of a form.

For example, I've marked on your spider in red where it looks like you cut back inside the silhouette of forms you had already drawn. On the same image I marked in blue where you attempted to extend your silhouette without really providing enough information for us to understand how those new additions were meant to exist in 3D space. You may have noticed that I've marked those hind legs in blue, this highlights the importance of "drawing through" your forms and completing them, even if they are partially obscured in the reference. This will help you to develop a better understanding of the 3D space that you're trying to create. We can see another example of this on this moth where one wing is overlapped by the other, it just stops existing in your drawing. But that wing doesn't stop existing in 3D space. Try to think of drawing these constructions like your have X-Ray vision, and figure out what is happening even in the parts that may not be visible in your reference. Draw each form in its entirety in order to maintain the 3D illusion in these exercises.

So, when we want to build on our construction or alter something we add new 3D forms to the existing structure. Forms with their own complete silhouettes - and by establishing how those forms either connect or relate to what's already present in our 3D scene. We can do this either by defining the intersection between them with contour lines (like in lesson 2's form intersections exercise), or by wrapping the silhouette of the new form around the existing structure as shown here.

This is all part of understanding that everything we draw is 3D, and therefore needs to be treated as such in order for both you and the viewer to believe in that lie.

You can see this in practice in this beetle horn demo, as well as in this ant head demo You can also see some good examples of this in the lobster and shrimp demos on the informal demos page As Uncomfortable has been pushing this concept more recently, it hasn't been fully integrated into the lesson material yet (it will be when the overhaul reaches Lesson 4). Until then, those submitting for official critiques basically get a preview of what is to come.

I'm noticing that when you include segmentation in your constructions, you tend to draw it as lines running straight (or nearly straight) across the abdomen, instead of being mindful to follow the curvature of the form. This is something Uncomfortable talks about a bit here on the informal demos page. I've done a bit of a draw over on your monkey hopper to show how to enforce the 3D illusion by:

-Wrapping the segments around the curvature of the underling form.

-Giving the segments their own volume by breaking the silhouette.

There are some places where your additional line weight gets a bit heavy handed, like on this spider. When adding line weight, there are a few things to remember. Weight is relative. You're not going in to make one line extremely bold on its own. You're going in to make it subtly thicker than another. This doesn't require the addition of much extra thickness, just enough to set it apart. Our subconscious will pick up on this difference even if our eyes don't immediately, and will understand the kind of hierarchy this is creating. Usually one superimposed stroke will be enough to create the desired effect.

I find that the most effective use of line weight - at least given the bounds and limitations of this course - is to use line weight specifically to clarify how different forms overlap one another, by limiting it to the localised areas where those overlaps occur. You can read more about this here. What this keeps us from doing is putting line weight in more random places, and worse, attempting to correct or hide mistakes behind line weight.

The next thing I wanted to talk about is leg construction. It looks like you were working towards using the sausage method for constructing most of your legs. It's not uncommon for students to be aware of the sausage method as introduced here, but to decide that the legs they're looking at don't actually seem to look like a chain of sausages, so they use some other strategy.

It's clear that you're intending to use the sausage method in your work, though you don't always quite stick to the characteristics of simple sausage forms and you're quite prone to attempting to alter the silhouettes of these sausage forms with one-off lines and partial shapes after you've already put them down on the page.

The key to keep in mind here is that the sausage method is not about capturing the legs precisely as they are - it is about laying in a base structure or armature that captures both the solidity and the gestural flow of a limb in equal measure, where the majority of other techniques lean too far to one side, either looking solid and stiff or gestural but flat. Once in place, we can then build on top of this base structure with more additional forms shown in these examples here, here, and in this ant leg demo and also here on this dog leg demo as this method should be used throughout lesson 5 too.

Okay, I think that covers it. You've understood this lesson pretty well and I'll be marking it as complete. Be sure to refer back to this feedback frequently and apply it to your work in the next lesson. These points will apply to animal constructions and the advice provided here should help you to get the most out of the next lesson.