Hi! I'll review your Lesson 5 submission.
Organic Intersections
You did a good job here, still there are a few things I'd like to point out.
Firstly, some of your sausages ended up squished because there's no more room on the page. If there's no more room, that's fine, no need to add additional sausages.
Secondly, your shadows are sometimes sticking to forms, for example the top left one on the first page.
Finally, I'm a bit confused as to what's going on with the right sausage on both pages. Our goal was to make them short and simple, so just regular stacking one on top of another is fine, no need to complicate things.
Animals
Generally you have pretty decent results here, I'll try to give you some insight on what you should try to improve in the future.
At the very start of your construction process, I'm noticing that your ribcages are always angled more horizontal than they need to be and this causes some animals to look stiff. Also when you angle the ribcage horizontally, you have to connect it to the pelvis with straight lines rather than curves and that introduces more problems later on. Just like the human body, animals have an asymmetrical ribcage and pelvis, meaning if the pelvis is angled downwards at the front, the ribcage will be angled downwards at the back. Don't be afraid to exaggerate these angles as you'll easily fill up the rest of the space above with additional masses. Here's a rough diagram of what I mean.
Try to avoid ending the additional masses in a sharp point. Rather try to imagine that they're water balloons, you're essentially stacking one mass on top of another. When you stack an object with a mass on top of another object, it doesn't completely stick to it like glue, it still preserves some of it's mass and that's mostly visible on the area I pointed to. What I'm saying is, if you make the edge curve a little bit before it touches the mass below, it will look more believable as an object in 3D space. Here's another diagram, it's a bit exaggerated to prove the concept. You have to do it on the left side as well. If you find this ruins the silhouette of the animal, you can just add an additional small mass on top to correct it.
In some of your head constructions (cat and dog), you seem to be relying on guesswork instead of using the construction method. It's easy to get lost without it, so I recommend always drawing it to produce the most consistent results. Professionals use it, even if they don't explicitly draw it they're still thinking about it in their heads. Here are some head construction examples:
On that note, I want to add that no matter what the head, every problem can be solved with this construction method. I noticed that you deviated from the circular head method to an oval head when you drew the cute cat. This resulted in a somewhat elongated head, which is not what we're looking for in this scenario. Even though this specific cat's face is quite round and bubbly, it can still be done with the standard construction method with additional masses on the side. You would only have to enlarge the primary construction sphere to accommodate.
I've heard that the crosshatching method of further legs isn't encouraged anymore by Drawabox (lesson 5 still isn't updated), but I'm not sure. Either way, I want to note that if you're gonna cross hatch, do it consistently on every object that's at the same distance from us. In the flamingo example, don't only do it on one side of the wing, do it on the whole wing in the back and the further leg as well.
Regarding the texture of the silhouette, remember that our goal is not to copy the reference exactly, but rather represent it in a way that conveys all of the necessary information to the viewer. On your first cow example, I'd recommend using the silhouette bumps way more sparingly. It's the same reason why you wouldn't draw every single hair strand on a person or fur strand on an animal. It comes down to how we process information visually, even more so when it comes to silhouettes.
I recommend being more bold when it comes to connecting the legs to the body. A lot of valuable information here is usually hidden by the body, but thankfully the cow reference perfectly illustrates my point. This is how far the legs should connect (take a look at the original reference after you see mine, you'll see the connection clearly if you look for it). Also, try to find a flow in the legs, even when they're standing straight. As I've mentioned before, asymmetry is everywhere in the body, both for humans and animals. It's there because it serves a function, think of it like a spring mechanism for the body. You can learn to see it eventually if you continuously look for it. My point being, try to make your leg sausages reflect the natural flow that happens in the legs. Don't worry about being accurate to your reference, that's not the goal here. You can fix the likeness with additional masses later. Also, here's some asymmetry in the human body.
To conclude, I think you got the gist of the exercises down, so I'll mark this lesson as complete. You're moving in the right direction, just keep it up and you'll end up where you want in no time. Even though you don't have to do revisions, I urge you to do the organic intersection exercise and draw an animal from reference as warmup from time to time, while keeping my critiques in mind. These things need time to be remembered and that can only happen if you keep your brain warmed up with practice. Good luck on your future lessons!
Next Steps:
Proceed onto lesson 6 and don't forget to do these exercises as a warmup!
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