Hello Jdbuenol, I'll be the teaching assistant handling your lesson 5 critique.

Starting with your organic intersections you're doing a good job of keeping your sausage forms simple, and I'm happy to see that you're drawing through them all as this helps reinforce your understanding of 3D space. Some of your contour curves are a little bit stiff and hesitant on the first page, but I can see a noticeable improvement with them in the second, nice work!

Sometimes you're drawing the contour ellipse on the end of the form a bit skewed. In future, if the form you draw misses your flow line, draw the contour ellipse on the middle of the form, instead of on the flow line.

This exercise is less about getting organic forms to actually cut into one another, and more about how they can be piled on top of one another in a way that feels convincing. There are a few forms going through each other in your homework. I don't think it's intentional, but I've highlighted one such case on your work here and pulled the top form up a bit so that it rests on top of the lower form instead of cutting through it. I know it can be tricky to judge where to put your forms so they wrap around each other, and you're doing a lot better than your lesson 2 pages, it's just something to keep working on.

We want all the forms in the pile to feel stable and supported, like we could go for lunch and when we get back they'll all still be where we left them. Think of these forms like well-filled water balloons, they're weighty, and pliable. If you leave gaps underneath your forms it can make them feel stiff or weightless. I've done a quick edit to a couple of stiff forms here.

You're doing quite well with your shadows. You're pushing them far enough that they cast onto the form below, and their direction is consistent. The shadow on the bottom right of your first page is indicative of a ball or sphere. Try to imagine the shadow cast by the entire form, not just the part closest to the ground plane. I've made some suggested edits to your shadows here.

Moving on to your animal constructions I can see that you've been quite conscientious about starting your constructions with 3 major masses for the cranial ball, rib cage and pelvis, and that you're connecting the rib cage and pelvis into a torso sausage. In most of your constructions you've remembered to connect the cranium to the body with a simple, solid neck too. That's great, it gives you a nice solid foundation to build your constructions from. Sometimes the ellipse you draw for the cranial ball ends up stretched and/or tilted, as seen in this rabbit, this elephant, this bird, this axolotl and this bird. They're all tilted the same way, suggesting it may be a habit that you're not fully aware of. We're aiming for the cranial ball to be spherical, so the ellipse you draw should be a circle. Obviously you're not a robot so it won't be a perfect circle, but do keep working on it as there is a noticeable trend for you to squash and tilt them. And of course, keep working with using the ghosting method and executing them confidently, as I noticed a few ellipses are a bit hesitant and wobbly, here and there. I know you're working on your ellipses and you are improving, there's plenty of really good ones in your homework, I just want to encourage you to continue to give them plenty of attention.

In lesson 4 we introduced the idea of differentiating between taking actions in 2D, where we're just thinking about our drawing as lines on the page, and actions in 3D, where we're treating our drawings as 3D structures, and adding complete forms with their own silhouette whenever we want to build on constructions. We introduced a rule to help reinforce this 3D illusion: once you've put a form down on the page, do not attempt to alter its silhouette.

Throughout your homework you're taking actions in 2D space by extending your silhouettes with one-off lines and partial shapes. For example I've highlighted some of them on this cat in blue. I also established a 3D connection between the head and body.

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. Please refer back to your lesson 4 critique for a more detailed explanation on this, as well as links to some helpful diagrams and examples. I can see that you are working on using additional masses in places, which is a good start. We can be a bit more specific about how we design the shape of those masses though.

One thing that helps with the shape here is to think about how the mass would behave when existing first in the void of empty space, on its own. It all comes down to the silhouette of the mass - here, with nothing else to touch it, our mass would exist like a soft ball of meat or clay, made up only of outward curves. A simple circle for a silhouette.

Then, as it presses against an existing structure, the silhouette starts to get more complex. It forms inward curves wherever it makes contact, responding directly to the forms that are present. The silhouette is never random, of course - always changing in response to clear, defined structure. You can see this demonstrated in this diagram.

So, for example, I've done another edit on the same cat where I've redrawn your 2D extensions (most of them, we'll talk about head construction later) and your additional mass. So, all these extensions now have their own fully enclosed silhouettes. I've taken the opportunity to wrap them around the underlying structures, I've shown with arrows where they're pressed against and around the neck, shoulders, thighs and tail. The more interlocked they are, the more spatial relationships we define between the masses, the more solid and grounded everything appears.

The smaller extensions you added where the feet connect to the legs could either be achieved by using additional masses, or by drawing the forms of the feet overlapping the legs a bit more. I've shown both strategies on your work.

I'm noticing a tendency to start your construction off lighter, and then increase the weight of your marks as you progress. This can encourage us to redraw more of the structure than we strictly need to. I would strongly recommend that you maintain roughly the same thickness of line throughout the entire construction, only applying further line weight for clarifying overlaps as explained here towards the end.

I think you may have a slight misunderstanding of the purpose of the ellipses we draw for the shoulders and thighs. I noticed some constructions like this rabbit and this elephant where you drew them very small, almost like little holes for the legs to sprout from. You're partially correct in this thinking, we certainly do use them to attach the legs to the body, but the ellipses of the shoulders and thighs are also masses in their own right. Uncomfortable uses them as a simplification of some of the bulky muscles that help the animal walk. I think it will help you if you make your shoulder masses bigger. Not only does it make for a better way to connect the legs, it also gives you more structural elements to help lock in place any additional masses you may want to use.

For your legs, I'm glad you're using the sausage method of construction as requested, I can see you're making an effort to keep those sausage forms simple, and you usually remember the contour curve to reinforce the joints. All of this is a good start! There is plenty of room for improvement, and some of this will come down to giving yourself, and your constructions, more time. I noticed some legs are simplified to the point of missing major joints, like this rabbit which has no knees or elbows. Others have legs which are rather out of proportion, I don't need to see the reference to know that this deer's front leg is way thicker than is should be. One front leg on this elephant has a substantial indent at the joint, possibly due to not being fully in control of your sausage forms just yet, but it could have been smoothed out by using an additional mass instead of leaving it as it is. You're going to need to give yourself a bit more time to observe your reference, and extract information from it frequently, every few seconds. You may want to review this section on observation from lesson 2. Once you have extracted the information of exactly what form you need to draw next, where and how big, you'll also need to use the ghosting method to full effect to maximise your chance of drawing the mark you intend to make, with confidence. Of course inevitably sometimes we won't make the mark we wanted to, and I'm glad that you're sticking with what is on the page, and not trying to redraw things to correct them, so that's the right mentality. I'd like to reiterate the idea that once the base armature of your sausage chain is in place you can and should build on that, as shown in this dog leg demo.

While you're generally building things up in stages, there are a few places where you skip ahead and try to add too much complexity all at once and it falls flat. An example would be the feet (hands?) on your axolotl and again with the feet of your alligator Always start simple, and add complexity step-by-step. Speaking of feet, these notes on foot construction may be useful.

I spotted that you went straight for a rather complicated shape for the wings of your hybrid. I found this diagram that shows how to start with a simple shape and build feathers on top of it, I hope it helps.

You also need to take your time to observe and plan every textural mark or little detail you want to add to your constructions too. Sometimes when marks are small it can be tempting to devote less time or effort on each one. Resist this temptation. It's easy to fall into autopilot when adding texture and detail, but if you add the same mark in the same manner over and over it quickly makes your drawing look monotonous. The near-identical tufts of fur on this deer do little to add information or interest to your drawing. I can tell from the even size, shape and spacing that they were not individually observed or designed. If you want to add texture, you will need to spend a lot more time on it. When we add texture in this course we're using cast shadow shapes to implicitly describe the smaller forms running along the surface of the construction. We're telling the viewer how that surface feels if your run your hand along it. This has nothing to do with what colour that surface happens to be. For the purpose of these exercises you can imagine your animals are all one color. So there is no need to draw the stripey pattern on this cat. Construction is the main focus of this lesson, so if you would prefer not to add texture (and avoid getting bullied about it) that's fine.

The last thing I wanted to talk about is head construction. Lesson 5 has a lot of different strategies for constructing heads, between the various demos. Given how the course has developed, and how Uncomfortable is finding new, more effective ways for students to tackle certain problems. So not all the approaches shown are equal, but they do have their uses. As it stands, as explained at the top of the tiger demo page (here), the current approach that is the most generally useful, as well as the most meaningful in terms of these drawings all being exercises in spatial reasoning, is what you'll find here in this informal head demo.

There are a few key points to this approach:

1- The specific shape of the eye sockets - the specific pentagonal shape allows for a nice wedge in which the muzzle can fit in between the sockets, as well as a flat edge across which we can lay the forehead area.

2- This approach focuses heavily on everything fitting together - no arbitrary gaps or floating elements. This allows us to ensure all of the different pieces feel grounded against one another, like a three dimensional puzzle.

3- We have to be mindful of how the marks we make are cuts along the curving surface of the cranial ball - working in individual strokes like this (rather than, say, drawing the eye socket with an ellipse) helps a lot in reinforcing this idea of engaging with a 3D structure.

Try your best to employ this method when doing constructional drawing exercises using animals in the future, as closely as you can. Sometimes it seems like it's not a good fit for certain heads, but as shown in in this banana-headed rhino it can be adapted for a wide array of animals.

I can see that you're using parts of the construction method for your heads. I think this cat was your best attempt. You drew big angular eyesockets and wedged the footprint of the muzzle up against them like puzzle pieces. You still want to complete the puzzle, adding the brow ridge, cheekbones etc, but it's a good start. Most of your other head constructions have more rounded eye sockets floating loosely without any clear relationships to other structures.

Conclusion

I won't be moving you on to the next lesson just yet. I want you to be able to demonstrate that you can understand and apply this feedback so that you can continue to get the most out of these exercises in the future.

-Do your best to only take actions in 3D space, adding whole forms with complete silhouettes instead of one off lines and partial shapes.

-Take your time. I know we've said this before but make sure you're taking as much time as you need to observe, plan, ghost, and execute each mark to the best of your current ability.

Of course if anything that has been said to you here, or previously, is unclear, you are welcome to ask questions.

Please complete 4 pages of animal constructions. You're free to choose what kinds of animals you'd like to draw.