So the main reason there are so many "informal demos" - especially when it comes to head construction - is that I'm continually finding better ways to explain the concepts, more effective techniques and restrictions for students to follow, and so on. The informal demos are where the explanations I give to students through critiques go, so I am glad that you dug into them to study those demonstrations, because in many ways, they do supersede the main demos in the lesson. For example, here in the tiger head demo I explain that students should definitely be looking at this head construction explanation from the informal demos.

I am currently in the process of overhauling the whole course, to take the concepts from the informal demos and actually replace the main demos in each lesson with fresh content, and more concise explanations. This is a very long process however, and I'm still only about halfway through updating Lesson 1.

Now, your work here exists in two distinct parts:

• There's the drawings you did along with the demonstrations, which by and large are pretty well done, showing careful observation of the steps outlined in each demo, as well as a pretty decent grasp of how these forms all interact with one another in 3D space. They're not perfect, and there are plenty of points you're missing, but there's a lot of good stuff here. Looking at this moose head construction for example shows that you absolutely grasp how the brow ridge section wraps around the top of the cranial ball, and how it relates to the muzzle form. It all feels fairly 3D and solid (although you appear to be consistently forgetting to draw through your ellipses - something I addressed in my critique of your lesson 4 work, in bold).

• The other part is where you do your own drawings - and to be completely honest with you, it appears to me that you're carrying over very little from the first section (the drawings you did along with the demonstrations). Everything becomes very stiff and flat. You draw largely from memory instead of direct observation (resulting in severe oversimplification, you can read more about how important it is to observe your reference constantly here), and you regularly attempt to draw extremely complex silhouettes/shapes, instead of building them up step by step. An example of that last one is how your camel muzzles start out with a relatively simple, but extremely flat shape (rather than a simple 3D form), and then you immediately jump into way more complexity capturing the lip and mouth without laying down structure to support it.

Given these issues, it's very difficult to pick out specific issues to address, because in essence the problem is that there are so many things pointed out in the demos that you did study, that you're just ignoring. There are also things in previous critiques that I've pointed out time and time again, which you are simply not following. Obviously this isn't intentional on your part, but it leaves me having to put vast amounts of time into every critique I give you, only to have a see a small percentage of it applied in the work you go on to submit.

Anyway, there are at least a couple significant issues I can pick out and address directly.

Additional Masses

The first of these is with how you handle your additional masses. Let's take a look at this bear. Along its back, you've dropped three sausage forms. These forms do not really feel as though they're a part of the animal's body - instead, they feel like someone has placed forms there, and that they will roll off as soon as the animal moves.

When drawing those forms - when defining their silhouette - you did not go to any lengths to define the relationship between them and the structure they were being attached to in 3D space. This 3D relationship is something that can only be defined by the form's own silhouette - not by adding contour lines after the fact, because those contour lines will only make each form feel 3D on their own, in isolation. That's why they don't feel like they're being held together with the body. If you look at the example from the lesson, those masses are actually curving and wrapping around the other parts of the body, "gripping" them.

You rely really heavy on those basic contour lines, piling them on wherever you feel uncertain about a form. These contour lines which sit on the surface of a single form, unfortunately have very limited usefulness. Adding a ton of them won't help, because they suffer from diminishing returns. The first one may have a fair bit of impact - again, in making that form feel 3D on its own - but the second will have much less effect. The third will have even less than that. Worse still, they do not help to define relationships between forms in 3D space - they just make the form feel 3D on its own.

A contour line can be used to help define the relationship between two forms, but only when used to define the intersection between them, like in lesson 2's form intersections. In this way, it can be used really effectively - for example, in the sausage method, where we define the relationships between the sausage segments to make that whole structure feel solid and 3D.

When it comes to the additional masses however, we're not intersecting two forms - we're piling them atop one another. They rely really heavily on how their silhouettes are drawn. When floating in a void, on their own and away from our construction, we can think of them like soft balls of meat, with nothing but simple, outward curves the whole way through (looking kind of like a sphere). Once they press up against a structure however, the part that makes contact will curve inward in response, and corners will form where these curvatures change. You can see this demonstrated here. These inward curves and corners introduce complexity to our silhouette, and so in order for the form to continue to feel solid and three dimensional, it is critical that every bit of complexity corresponds to a specific defined stimulus. There should be no such complexity without a clear form-interaction to cause it.

A good example of how all these forms play off one another can be seen in this ant leg demo and this dog leg demo. You can see there how each form is pressing up against another, how they're all tightly bound to one another, and how no complexity is arbitrary.

This ultimately means that you either get this right when drawing the silhouette, or not at all. There's no coming back afterwards to fix things with a ton of contour lines.

Head Construction

Here is a gazelle head construction you did from one of the informal demos. The demo itself wasn't perfect (for example, it doesn't wedge all the different components together like pieces of a puzzle in the way that this head construction explanation emphasizes), but it does work towards establishing a really strong overall structure. I think you've done a particularly good job when following along with this demonstration, in capturing those elements. Your gazelle head feels very solid and three dimensional.

Next, let's look at this drawing of yours - which appears to also be a gazelle, or perhaps something similar. Notice how you employed a completely different approach to the construction of its head? Unless you did this drawing first, then followed the head construction demonstration (which itself wouldn't make all that much sense, since one would hope you'd study the demos and then apply what you'd learned to your own drawings), there's no real way to make sense of this.

Sausage Method

I wasn't initially going to mention this, but I may as well. You're clearly trying to apply certain aspects of the sausage method to construct your animals' legs, but you're very selective (or perhaps more accurately, not entirely aware) in which parts you actually use. For example, looking at this giraffe, you're not sticking at all to simple sausages. Same thing with this camel. There are some places in which you try to use sausages (like the gazelle drawing), but sometimes you let some of those segments deviate from the simple sausage characteristics.

It all comes back to the fact that when you're doing your own drawings, I don't really get the impression that you're paying attention. You're obviously trying to apply some elements - you've got the sausage method in there, you're using some aspects of constructions, and you use a ton of contour lines (WAY more than you should, and usually they're very shallow and don't wrap around the form properly).

Do not cut back into the silhouettes of forms that you've constructed

The last thing I want to mention is that I want you to avoid cutting back into the silhouettes of the forms you've already constructed. Basically it's what you're doing when drawing your camel's heads, as well as the t-rex head in your last drawing. You draw a bigger form, and then cut back into it to draw a much more complex structure within it.

I want you to avoid doing this because as explained here, this sort of approach tends to flatten out your drawing, because it simply doesn't follow the steps required to continue thinking in 3D. When working on organic subject matter like this, it's best to stick to working additively. A good example of this is this ant head demo I shared with you in the previous lesson. Note how I build up gradually to capture a greater level of complexity. I don't just draw a box and then draw the fully complex end result inside of it. I work my way there step by step.

You did this yourself when drawing along with the moose head and anteater head demonstrations. Step by step, you built up to the final result - you didn't jump straight to drawing the object, after the first most basic form was laid down.

Conclusion

I want you to do this lesson over, from the beginning (as a new submission which will cost you another 2 credits), adhering to the following rules:

• You may not use demonstrations as part of your submission. You're welcome to do them, in order to learn from them, but your whole lesson submission must consist of drawings done from your own reference.

• Do not skip steps. Build things up steadily, one simple form at a time.

• Draw everything as its own complete, enclosed, simple form. Do not cut into or otherwise redraw/modify/alter the silhouette of a form that's already been drawn.

• You may not use any contour lines except for those that define the intersection between two forms (like those we use in the sausage method, to define the joint between two sausage segments).

• Draw through all of your ellipses 2 full times before lifting your pen.

• Observe your reference consistently and continuously. Only look away from your reference long enough to make a specific mark, before looking back at your reference to refresh your memory.

• Actually apply what you see in the demonstrations. Don't jump into the drawings as though your instincts will carry you - you need to be conscious and intentional in applying all of these principles. They don't just happen.

And last of all, in the past I told you that if you did not make an adequate effort to apply the points I'd raised in my critique, you would no longer be allowed to submit homework for critique. I'm putting that in effect once again. This is not so much a punishment, because I understand that you clearly are not doing this on purpose. The fact of the matter is that I simply don't have the time to entertain it further. I've already hit an hour in writing this critique, and those in the previous lessons really haven't been much different. That's not even factoring in feedback I've given on revisions. It's simply not feasible, when I have countless other students to critique after you.

This whole system of cheap, affordable feedback only works when the students themselves take on their fair share of the work, leaving me just to point out key misunderstandings and otherwise mark things as complete. So, you basically have one more shot at this. Make it count.