Hello DrDarkly, thank you for replying with your revisions.

It is good to see that you're drawing your first stages more boldly now, this will help you to treat them as solid and three dimensional.

I have a few points I'd like you to keep in mind in future, and I've used your weevil as an example.

I can see from the little dots that you are meticulously planning your constructions, and using the first phase of the ghosting method (planning) to good effect. There are a couple of spots where the final phase (execution) looks a little hesitant, most notably on your ellipses. As noted on your work here, remember to draw around your ellipses 2 full times before lifting your pen off the page, this will help you to execute them smoothly.

On the same image I wanted to bring to your an attention an area where you'd left a gap in the middle of your construction. There is no form established in this region, so it reads as a void. Here I've drawn an extra form connecting the thorax and abdomen together, and giving the armour plating and hind legs something to attach to. I've also used some contour curves to show how these primary ball-like forms connect together in space, just like the form intersections exercise from lesson 2.

When building these constructions, we want all the pieces to fit together with tight specific relationships, a bit like Lego bricks that snap together. On this image I wanted to note that leaving the ball of the abdomen floating inside the additional form you'd drawn gives a rather vague relationship between the stages of construction. Rather than fully enveloping one form inside another, look for ways to break the addition into smaller pieces that can each have their own individual relationship with the underlying form defined, as shown here. The key is not to engulf an entire form all the way around - always provide somewhere that the form's silhouette is making contact with the structure, so you can define how that contact is made.

During my initial critique I introduced the following rule to help you to take actions on your constructions that reinforce the 3D illusion, rather than undermining it. "Once you've put a form down on the page, do not attempt to alter its silhouette." I've marked on your work in red here where it looks like you cut back inside forms you had already established, and in blue where you'd extended off existing forms with one-off lines and partial shapes. Please re-read my initial critique for an explanation and examples of how to "take actions in 3D" by drawing complete forms with their own fully enclosed silhouettes wherever you want to build on your constructions. If anything said to you in a critique is unclear or confusing you are allowed to ask questions. I think it is possible that you may be thinking of adding complexity to the legs in the same way we added edge detail to leaves back in lesson 3. Unfortunately as explained in this section this strategy only really works for forms that are already flat.

Lastly l'll talk about leg construction. I can see you've made an effort to use the sausage method, and you're doing a good job of keeping your sausage forms simple. You tend to make the overlaps between the sausage forms really minimal (sometimes nonexistent) which makes is hard (or impossible) to apply the contour curve at each joint where the sausage forms connect together in 3D space. You'll find these curves highlighted in red on this copy of the sausage method diagram and while they might seem small and insignificant they are a very useful tool for reinforcing the 3D illusion of the construction. Be sure to also establish how the leg connects to the body. I've redrawn one of your legs here to show correct application of the sausage method, and I'd like you to take measures to apply this to your animal constructions as you move through the next lesson.

I've called out a few things to work on, but they can all continue to be addressed into the next lesson, so I'll go ahead and mark this one as complete. Just be sure to actively tackle these points as you handle your animals. It's not uncommon for students to acknowledge these points here, but forget about them once they move on, resulting in me having to repeat it in the next critique (which we certainly want to avoid).