Looking at your work here, I can see a lot of movement in the right direction, although there are some aspects of the techniques you're using that can certainly be improved and refined to yield better results.

Starting with your organic intersections, these are looking solid. You're clearly demonstrating a strong grasp of how these forms interact with one another in 3D space, and how gravity impacts them all as they find stability amongst one another.

Stepping through your animal constructions, I can see that you're making varying use of the techniques introduced in the lesson - especially the additional masses, contour lines, and the definition of the intersections between forms (like in head construction). The specifics of how you use them however, and where they're used, aren't always entirely correct or ideal.

Let's start by talking about contour lines. A contour line line is a mark that runs along the surface of a form, and in doing so helps describe how that form exists in 3D space, though most do so somewhat in isolation. That is, it'll make itself feel 3D, but it's not really in relation to anything else. Because of this, there are situations where such a contour line will help a great deal, but if you start piling them on, they suffer from diminishing returns. For example, the first may help a form feel much more 3D, the second may have much less of an impact, and the third and fourth may have virtually no impact at all.

Furthermore, there are different kinds of contour lines. There are the ones described above - those that sit on the surface of a single form. Then there's the intersectional ones which define the relationship between two forms. These are vastly more impactful because of the fact that they're not only working in isolation, but rather giving us a grasp of how these forms exist together. For example, take a look at how on this deer, you've defined the connection between the neck and the torso. With that one contour line, you've made both forms feel solidly three dimensional. No overuse of other contour lines required - one simple line, and the relationship and solidity of both forms is cemented.

Always look for opportunities like these, to define the relationship between forms, and only use the first kind of contour line where it's absolutely necessary. Right now you clearly have a tendency to just throw it wherever, without necessarily thinking about what it's meant to accomplish, and that is never correct. When planning out a stroke, you need to determine precisely what task you want it to accomplish, then consider what will best allow it to execute that task for you.

The last point here to mention is that the additional forms we draw function themselves like contour lines, except for the fact that they're three dimensional entities rather than lines. They actually wrap around existing structures, and while they don't actually intersect with forms, they do define their own relationship with that underlying structure in a similar way, with the same kinds of benefits.

This idea of "wrapping around" that underlying structure introduces certain complexities, but it's really important that you not look at that as a free pass to make the silhouette of that form as complicated as you want. Anywhere that form is wrapping around other forms, you can curl around them as needed, but for any part that is just sitting on its own (like the tops of the forms along the back of an animal) it must be kept simple. You can see this demonstrated in these notes. In those notes you'll see a couple of things to keep in mind:

• Keeping the forms simple as mentioned above. The back and belly masses of this wildebeest are definitely way too complex, which is exactly why you felt the need to add so many contour lines after the fact. Generally speaking a well executed additional mass probably won't need any additional support.

• Avoiding additional forms that are too big (like this deer's back-mass stretching across the whole of its torso).

• Ensuring that forms don't just overlap in 2D space like stickers pasted on top of one another - making them instead wrap around one another, as one additional mass becomes the "underlying, existing structure" for the next.

The other major thing I wanted to address is how you're approaching the construction of your animals' legs. Back in lesson 4, you were making decent use of the sausage method, though here you appear to have abandoned it altogether. Even when following along with the wolf demo, you appear to have deviated from the instructions (which employ the sausage method).

It's understandable that students sometimes decide that the legs they're looking at don't actually seem to look like a chain of sausages, so they use some other strategy - but within the scope of this course, it's also not correct. The key to keep in mind here is that the sausage method is not about capturing the legs precisely as they are - it is about laying in a base structure or armature that captures both the solidity and the gestural flow of a limb in equal measure, where the majority of other techniques lean too far to one side, either looking solid and stiff or gestural but flat. Once in place, we can then build on top of this base structure with more additional forms as shown here, here, and even here in the context of a dog's leg . Just make sure you start out with the sausages, precisely as the steps are laid out in that diagram - don't throw the technique out just because it doesn't immediately look like what you're trying to construct.

Now, while those are the major points I wanted to mention, I do also want you to pay more attention to how you construct your animals' heads. As you can see in this tapir head demo and in this moose head demo, it's important that you treat the head as a three dimensional puzzle, with large chunks (the cheekbone, the muzzle, the brow ridge) all being fitted up against the eye socket. Do not allow the facial components to float loosely from one another.

So, with that all laid out, I'd like you to do a few additional pages (which you'll find assigned below) to demonstrate your understanding of the material below.