I'll be the TA handling your Lesson 2 critique.

You're making progress towards understanding the concepts introduced in this lesson and hopefully this critique will help you in your future attempts.

• Starting off with the arrows section you want to be making sure you're drawing confidently to keep your arrows as smooth as possible, accuracy will come with mileage. There are spots where your arrows bulge/narrow suddenly, this is an issue because it gives the impression that your arrows are stretching which hurts their solidity. Remember that as our arrows move closer to the viewer we want them to widen consistently. It's good to see that you're trying to implement line weight, just remember that you want to keep your applications subtle and you'll become consistent with mileage. here are some things to look out for when applying it. I'd like you to experiment more with foreshortening in your future attempts, by utilizing it in both the arrows themselves as well as the negative space between their curves we can create a stronger illusion of an object moving through 3D space as demonstrated here.

• Moving into the organic forms with contours exercise your forms are getting a bit too complex. We want to create our forms with both ends being the same size and to avoid any pinching, bloating, or stretching along the form's length as discussed here. You're keeping your line work mostly confident here which is good, there are a few stiff moments which shows some hesitation but you improve as you continue through the lesson. If you feel uncomfortable working with contours still don't stress with more mileage it'll become more natural. Speaking of contours I'd like you to try and shift the degree of your contours more. The degree of a contour line basically represents the orientation of that cross-section in space, relative to the viewer, and as we slide along the sausage form, the cross section is either going to open up (allowing us to see more of it) or turn away from the viewer (allowing us to see less), as shown here.

• In the texture exercises you're focusing largely on outlines and negative space rather than cast shadows created by forms along the texture itself. This makes it difficult to create gradients with implied information which we could then use to create focal points in more complex pieces, by doing so we can prevent our viewers from being visually overwhelmed with too much detail. For more on the importance of focusing on cast shadows read here. I'd also like to quickly direct you to this image which shows that when we're working with thin line like textures if we outline and fill the shadow we will create a much more dynamic texture than simply drawing lines.

Before moving onwards I'll address your texture comments. While we do plan on improving the texture section as the course is revamped and making it clearer I'm not exactly certain how you came to the conclusions you did without possibly reading too quickly or just forming a misunderstanding somewhere and continuing to build upon it. I'll quickly go over the concept to hopefully clarify things.

The goal of these texture exercises is thinking about the 3D space you're working in (this is an overarching goal for the whole course) and drawing cast shadows to imply the existence of forms. The instructions explain the difference between cast and form shadows in the beginning and stresses not to capture the form shadows.

Instead we want to be thinking of how our textures exist in 3D space, this means they need to have forms that can cast a shadow (and aren't just a pattern or changes of colour). Then we decide where our light source is and it's intensity, these factors determine the direction and intensity of our shadows and allow us to create our gradient.

I may be mistaken but the misunderstanding possibly came from the reminders section where Uncomfortable talks about how you aren't just copying your reference one to one, there may be cast shadows that you ignore and some that you create. This doesn't mean don't draw cast shadows, it just means you aren't copying your reference exactly (much like how you can look at a reference sheet for a character but you aren't going to draw them in the pose they're in, you may change their outfit and pose them differently). Instead you decide which cast shadows you want to capture to best imply the information you want the viewer to see. You want to use shadows to hint that something exists in that space, draw the shadows created by a scale to imply the scale is there rather than drawing the scale itself. Using your ice cream cone as an example quickly, you draw each little diamond section's outline of the cone, instead you just want to place a light somewhere and draw the shadows inside those small sections. Hair is one you mention and it's definitely possible but it's a trickier texture to capture so I don't recommend it right away typically. Rather than drawing the strands you draw the shadows between them, seeing as they shadows are small and plentiful it can be a bit overwhelming, it's generally easier to start with something like scales, bricks, bark etc.

Hopefully that helps a bit, I'd encourage you to look through the texture section again as well but it is something that we expect students to struggle with, as it's very difficult and becomes easier as you progress through the course.

• It's quite common for people to feel like they don't fully grasp the form intersections exercise (much like texture), if you feel like you may fall into this category try not to stress too much. 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 the upcoming lessons.Your forms are looking quite solid here and they believably appear to belong in the same cohesive 3D space, good work.

• While wrapping up your submission with the organic intersections exercise you do a great job demonstrating that your sense of 3D space is developing as your forms begin to wrap around each other believably. You're keeping your forms simple and easy to work with which is a good strategy to help produce good results. I'd like you to draw through all of your forms when attempting this exercise again in the future, it will help reinforce your understanding of the 3D space you're creating. When it comes to your shadows you're pushing them enough so that they cast rather than just hugging the form that creates them which is a great start. It appears like your shadows aren't following a consistent light source, I recommend pushing your light source to the top left or right corner of the page to start with, it's easier than working with a light directly above your form pile.

Overall this was a solid submission, while you may have some things to work on I have no doubt you will improve with more mileage. I'll be marking your submission as complete and move you on to the next lesson.

Keep practicing previous exercises as warm ups and good luck in lesson 3!