Jumping right into the organic arrows, you've done a great job keeping the focus on the fluidity of your lines and the confidence of your execution. I can see that you're also paying close attention to the application of foreshortening to the positive space (the structure of the arrows themselves), although aside from a few cases like this one, the negative space is not given as much consideration as it could be, resulting in a limit to how much depth is conveyed. This is actually pretty normal, which is the reason that when we recently released updated material for the first section of Lesson 2, we made a point of including this in both the video and the written material, so be sure to give those a look.

Looking at your sausage forms with contour lines,

• Nice work sticking to the characteristics of simple sausages.

• You've done a good job drawing both the contour ellipses and contour curves with confidence, which helps to maintain an even shape/appropriate curvature, while also maintaining accuracy enough to keep the contour lines snug within the silhouettes of the sausage forms. This all works to convey a strong sense that the sausages have volume to them, rather than simply being flat shapes on the page.

• When choosing the degree of your contour lines, I am noticing some signs that this may require a bit of extra attention - most notably, cases like this one where the degree gets narrower until the middle, and then widens out again, despite there being no other signs that the sausage is bending in a way that would cause this result. Previously we mainly relied on the fact that Lesson 1's ellipses section discusses the mechanics that drive the degree of a given circular cross-section in 3D space, but with the updates to the material for this exercise, we did put a greater focus on this point in the video and in the written material here - that should help clarify how to approach choosing which degree to use in a given location.

• Also pay special attention to where that material talks about the ellipses we add to the tips of sausages that are turned to face towards the viewer. In examples like this, you've got such an ellipse on an end of the sausage which the contour curves tell us is facing away from the viewer.

Continuing onto the texture section, one thing to keep in mind is that the concepts we introduce relating to texture rely on skills our students generally don't have right now - because they're the skills this entire course is designed to develop. That is, spatial reasoning. Understanding how the textural forms sit on a given surface, and how they relate to the surfaces around them (which is necessary to design the shadow they would cast) is a matter of understanding 3D spatial relationships. The reason we introduce it here is to provide context and direction for what we'll explore later - similarly to the rotated boxes/organic perspective boxes in Lesson 1 introducing a problem we engage with more thoroughly in the box challenge. Ultimately my concern right now is just how closely you're adhering to the underlying steps and procedure we prescribe (especially those in these reminders).

I can definitely see a good bit of use of this approach in your texture analyses, although it is definitely as one tool of many, rather than using it to the exclusion of all other methodologies, and so we definitely still see the use of one-off strokes (most prominently in your dissections) that aren't planned out/designed as meticulously. While it's true that there are certainly going to be shadows that are cast that are so small they can't reasonably be executed using our two step methodology, in such cases it's better to actually leave them out, for the following reasons:

• A designed shape, despite not being something we can create quite as small as a one-off stroke, tapers in a more nuanced, delicate fashion, whereas a one-off stroke is more likely to end in a manner that feels more sudden. Thus, the shapes lean better into our goal of creating a gradient that transitions from black to white (and ultimately we have to pick a point for the shadows to drop off altogether anyway, so pushing a little farther with singular strokes isn't strictly necessary).

• Drawing in one-off strokes allows us to lean more into drawing directly from observation (as opposed to observing, understanding the forms that we see as they exist in 3D space, then creating shadows based on that understanding), which can be very tempting as it can allow us to create more visually pleasing things without all of the extra baggage of thinking in 3D. But of course, 3D spatial reasoning is the purpose of this course.

This is still fairly normal for this stage, just keep that point in mind as you continue forwards, as it will ensure that when you engage with textural problems in this course, you're keeping the focus on the spatial reasoning the course seeks to focus on.

Moving onto the form intersections, this exercise serves two main purposes:

• Similarly to the textures, it introduces the problem of the intersection lines themselves, which students are not expected to understand how to apply successfully, but rather just make an attempt at - this will continue to be developed from lessons 3-7, and this exercise will return in the homework in lessons 6 and 7 for additional analysis, and advice where it is deemed to be necessary). It seems that your first two pages of this exercise are entirely lacking in any attempts at intersection lines altogether, although your next two pages do seem to include them. Though I am going to overlook that, please note that there's no valid reason to have made the choice not to follow the instructions of the exercise in their entirety. You should not be so willing to disregard your responsibilities as a student of the official critique track, which is to do follow the instructions we set out to the best of your current ability - that doesn't mean doing it correctly, it means making the attempt.

• The other, far more important use of this exercise (at least in the context of this stage in the course) is that it is essentially a combination of everything we've introduced thus far. The principles of linework, the use of the ghosting method, the concepts surrounding ellipses along with their axes/degrees, perspective, foreshortening, convergence, the Y method, and so forth - all of it is present in this exercise. Where we've already confirmed your general grasp of these concepts in isolation in previous exercises, it is in presenting it all together that can really challenge a student's patience and discipline, and so it allows us to catch any issues that might interfere with their ability to continue forward as meaningfully as we intend.

As to this latter point, you've honestly done a great job, and I can see a great deal of care. Do however keep in mind that your use of line weight should be restricted to the approach we discuss here in Lesson 1 which puts the focus on being subtle in its use, and focusing it only on the localized areas of overlaps between specific lines.

Additionally, I would avoid trying to "draw through" your intersections - while drawing through our forms provides considerable benefits to our understanding of how these forms sit in space, while only minimally increasing the complexity of the tasks, drawing through intersections has the opposite balance with minimal benefits and considerable additional complexity to the point of distraction, which is why we don't approach it that way in the instructions.

Lastly, your organic intersections are coming along well. You're clearly thinking about how the forms slump and sag over one another under the influence of gravity, and you're developing your use of cast shadows to emphasize those spatial relationships. That said, don't be selective in terms of which forms cast shadows - be sure to cast shadows on the underlying round plane (since these aren't floating in space), and also ensure that every form is considered one by one in terms of which shadow it would cast.

While you do have some important points to keep in mind, I will be marking this lesson as complete.