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 that will hopefully help you in your future attempts at these exercises.
There's a few things I'd like you to keep in mind when trying the arrows exercise again in the future. The first is kind of a general suggestion across every exercise but the more attempts you give yourself the better your understanding will be, this doesn't mean grind pages and pages of each exercise but it does mean to give yourself room to make mistakes and build up mileage. While your arrows are by no means horrible you only drew 4 of them so you don't give yourself much time to understand the concepts being introduced, this relates to some of your later exercises as well. As for your arrows themselves they could flow a bit smoother, in some spots they stretch or pinch that doesn't keep them consistent. You apply line weight very heavily and instead of using it in subtly in the overlapping sections you use it on an entire edge. I'd also like you experiment with foreshortening, while you do make use of it again you don't give yourself room to experiment much, by making not only the arrows themselves larger but the space between the arrow's curves larger as it gets closer to us we can really sell the illusion of an arrow moving through 3D space as described here.
The majority of your organic forms with contours are kept pretty simple, just remember that our goal here is to keep both ends the same size and to avoid pinching, bloating, or stretching along the form as shown here. When it comes to your contours there are a few things to make note of, you're not always drawing through your ellipses as instructed in lesson 1, and both your contour lines and ellipses can appear quite stiff and wobbly at times showing a lack of confidence. The small ellipse at the end of your form should be limited to the side facing the viewer not on both ends, I'd also like you to work on shifting the degree of your contours. 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.
Your texture exercises are interesting, in the analysis section you're doing a pretty good job of focusing on shadows, but if we look at your beans as an example, beans are mostly smooth unless this is a particular type of bean that is really rough you're adding a lot of texture that wouldn't really be there. Remember that that this is about implying information so don't go overboard by using hatching or adding texture that isn't there, make choices of which shadows will be captured by how much light is present. In the dissections there are spots (octopus tentacles and woven basket) where 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. Overall while there are things to improve here, you're also off to a really good start, texture is very difficult so don't be discouraged by this section. While it may seem like I'm being very critical it's just because I'm trying to clarify where the mistakes are, your cobblestone texture in your dissections is really well done, each texture is it's own challenge so it requires lots of mileage to be comfortable with it.
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 the upcoming lessons. I will point out that my comment on not giving yourself enough time to understand a concept in the arrows exercise is partly in reference to this exercise as well. Your forms here don't always look as planned out as they could be, the lines in your boxes don't always converge consistently. It does give the impression that you may have gone "I don't understand this" and just tried to race through it. While it can be frustrating or difficult please do put in your best attempt and give yourself some room to breath and see what mistakes you're making.
As for your organic intersections I have a few suggestions to help with your future attempts. The first is I'd like you to draw through all of your forms, much line when we were drawing boxes by drawing through our forms we can build up a better understanding of the 3D space we're trying to establish. I'd also recommend pushing your light source to the top left or right corner rather than trying to have it directly above, directly above can leave things a bit unclear which then can lead to it appearing like your shadows favour a particular side and confuse yourself/the viewer. This is a great exercise for building up your understanding of 3D space, practicing organic forms and building up your sense of light and shadow, just remember to try and push your shadows so that they cast and don't just hug the form creating them.
Overall while you have some things to work on, I think you're on the right track and just need to build up some more mileage. I'll be marking your submission as complete and moving you on to the next lesson. Just remember to give yourself enough time to really experience the concepts being introduced.
Keep doing previous exercises as warm ups and good luck in the next lesson!
Next Steps:
Keep practicing previous exercises as warm ups.
Move on to lesson 3.
A lot of my students use these. The last time I used them was when I was in high school, and at the time I felt that they dried out pretty quickly, though I may have simply been mishandling them. As with all pens, make sure you're capping them when they're not in use, and try not to apply too much pressure. You really only need to be touching the page, not mashing your pen into it.
In terms of line weight, the sizes are pretty weird. 08 corresponds to 0.5mm, which is what I recommend for the drawabox lessons, whereas 05 corresponds to 0.45mm, which is pretty close and can also be used.
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