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

Starting with your organic forms, you're doing a pretty good job of drawing your lines smoothly, with confidence. Most of these forms do not stick to the characteristics of simple sausages that are introduced here, they tend to swell through their midsection and become bloated, and some of them have pointy ends. Most of these are either croissant-shaped, or almost elliptical. We're aiming for these forms to have two rounded ends of equal size connected by a bendy tube of consistent width. Focusing on those simple properties for each form helps us to capture the illusion of solidity for each one, which in turn is very valuable in using these sausages as one of the core building blocks of our constructions.

I noticed a few places where you went back over a line (usually the contour curves) presumably in an effort to correct it. The ghosting method emphasizes the importance of making one mark only. Correcting mistakes isn't actually helpful, given that the end result of the exercise is far less relevant and significant than the actual process used to achieve it. Rather, having a habit of correcting your mistakes can lean into the idea of not investing as much time into each individual stroke, and so it's something that should be avoided in favour of putting as much time as is needed to execute each mark. As for how you invest your time, make sure you're giving yourself ample time to align each contour curve so it is cut into two symmetrical halves by the central flow line, as best you can. Some of these contour curves are well aligned, though there are places where it looks like it may not have been on your mind as a priority.

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 also see a good example of how to vary your contour curves in this diagram showing the different ways in which our contour lines can change the way in which the sausage is perceived.

Moving on to your insect constructions on the whole you're doing pretty well. I have a sharp reminder of an issue that was bought up in your lesson 3 feedback, as well as some new information that I think will help with your future constructions. I am generally quite pleased with how you're approaching these, I can see you're starting each construction with simple forms, and building your constructions gradually without attempting to skip steps. I'm also happy to see that you generally "draw through" and complete most of your forms, establishing how the various pieces of your constructions connect together in 3D space with specific relationships.

The first issue I need to call out is one that has been brought to your attention before: You're starting most of your constructions with much fainter lines, (particularly the large ellipses for the head, thorax and abdomen) and coming back at a later stage with thicker lines to trace back over the parts you want to keep visible, or completely replace your foundational forms with something different. This is something Uncomfortable refers to as a light underdrawing and cleanup pass, and while this is a perfectly valid method of drawing in general, it is something we firmly discourage throughout this course.

Try to maintain a more consistent line thickness through the various stages of construction, do not switch pens, and do not change the manner in which you execute your lines (changing how much you tilt the pen, the pressure, and speed of execution can all affect the clarity of line). If you're not deliberately drawing your ellipses faintly, it is possible that your pen may be running low on ink, or damaged. If we look back at this page from your lesson 1 submission, the ellipses were showing clearly there, so something has changed between then and now.

At each step we only draw the parts that change. We do not completely redraw a form that is already on the page, as that is a problem we have already solved. As a finishing touch it helps to apply additional line weight to clarify overlaps, restricting it to localized areas where those overlaps occur. You can find an explanation for how to use line weight in this course in this video.

Drawing the first forms more faintly can lead to students of thinking of them as less solid, or less real, and to treat their initial forms as a suggestion, or rough guide. Instead, at each step we are essentially adding structure to this little world we are creating, and once a form is on the page it cannot be ignored.

This brings me to the next point I wanted to discuss, which relates to differentiating between the actions we can take when interacting with a construction, which fall into two groups:

• 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.

• 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.

For example - 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 mantidfly in red where it looks like you cut back inside the silhouette of forms you had already drawn. One thing I did notice is that many of the instances of cutting into forms (though not all) came down to the fact that your ellipses would come out a little loose (which is totally normal), and then you'd pick one of the inner edges to serve as the silhouette of the ball form you were constructing. This unfortunately would leave some stray marks outside of its silhouette, which does create some visual issues. Generally it is best to treat the outermost perimeter of the ellipse as the edge of the silhouette, so everything else remains contained within it. This diagram shows which lines to use on a loose ellipse.

Instead, 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 did want to note that I can see some places where you're already doing a good job of building up your constructions up with 3D forms, and I've drawn over some good examples in green on the abdomen of this weevil. On the same image I marked in blue where you'd extended off existing forms using partial, flat shapes, not quite providing enough information for us to understand how they actually connect to the existing structure in 3D space. While modifying the silhouettes of leaves in this manner was encouraged in the previous lesson, this worked because the leaves themselves are paper thin- essentially they are already flat, so altering their silhouette with one-off lines doesn't flatten them further. For solid forms (such as those leg sausages) we need to use another strategy, as discussed in this section.

The next thing I wanted to talk about is leg construction. It looks like you're aware of the sausage method but there is some variability in how closely you stick to all of its specific requirements. For example on your wasp demo you'd mostly constructed your legs from ellipses which are not sausage forms though on your louse you did a pretty good job at following the sausage method. You'll find a few notes on leg construction drawn directly onto your weevil.

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 as 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.

Now the last thing I want to discuss is in regards to your approach to the detail phase, once the construction is handled. There are some areas where it looks like you're paying attention to the forms that are physically present along the surface of your constructions, and thinking about how to imply their presence with cast shadows, which is great. There are other areas (such as the lines on the legs of your weevil) which have little resemblance to what is actually going on in the corresponding reference. I see some small bumps and dimples on the surface of the legs, and some teeny tiny hairs, but not the striations indicated by the lines in your drawing.

In effect, there are places where you're getting caught up in decorating your drawings (making them more visually interesting and pleasing by whatever means at your disposal), which is not what the texture section of Lesson 2 really describes. Decoration itself is not a clear goal - there's no specific point at which we've added "enough".

What we're doing in this course can be broken into two distinct sections - construction and texture - and they both focus on the same concept. With construction we're communicating to the viewer what they need to know to understand how they might manipulate this object with their hands, were it in front of them. With texture, we're communicating to the viewer what they need to know to understand what it'd feel like to run their fingers over the object's various surfaces. Both of these focus on communicating three dimensional information. Both sections have specific jobs to accomplish, and none of it has to do with making the drawing look nice.

Instead of focusing on decoration, what we draw here comes down to what is actually physically present in our construction, just on a smaller scale. As discussed back in Lesson 2's texture section, we focus on each individual textural form, focusing on them one at a time and using the information present in the reference image to help identify and understand how every such textural form sits in 3D space, and how it relates within that space to its neighbours. Once we understand how the textural form sits in the world, we then design the appropriate shadow shape that it would cast on its surroundings. The shadow shape is important, because it's that specific shape which helps define the relationship between the form casting it, and the surface receiving it.

As a result of this approach, you'll find yourself thinking less about excuses to add more ink, and instead you'll be working in the opposite - trying to get the information across while putting as little ink down as is strictly needed, and using those implicit markmaking techniques from Lesson 2 to help you with that. In particular, these notes are a good section to review, at minimum.

Okay, I think that should cover it. There is a lot you're doing pretty well, though there are a couple of issues I'd like to nip in the bud before moving on to the next lesson so I'll be assigning some fairly minor revisions. This feedback is quite dense, and you may need to read through it a few times to absorb it all. Some students find it helps to take notes in their own words, so they can more easily recall key points to work on. Once you've had time to process the information here, please complete the following:

• 1 page of organic forms with contour curves, sticking as closely to simple sausage forms as you can.

• 2 pages of insect or arachnid constructions. Please stick to construction only for these pages.