So the interesting thing here is that there are a number of issues that I'm seeing - the vast majority of them in fact - that come from you approaching things incorrectly. That may sound bad, but it actually isn't. It means that what is holding you back are the actual decisions you're making, not your ability to execute your intent. Not mostly, anyway.

As far as breaking things down into smaller forms go, you're actually not doing too badly. This ant for example, is actually not too bad. Still made up of flat shapes and not 3D forms for the most part, but the arrangement of those actually makes the ant as a whole still feel like it exists in 3D space, especially in how the feet touch the ground at different locations.

Anyway, before we get into all that, let's start with your organic forms with contour curves. There are two main problems here. First and foremost, your contour curves are not wrapping around the sausage forms correctly. It's the problem explained here in the notes. The solution to this is to "overshoot" your curves. That is, every curve is the visible portion of a larger contour ellipse that wraps all the way around the form. "Overshooting" your contour curves means drawing a little more of that ellipse, such that the line continues a little along the opposite side of the form. Here's what I mean.

The second issue has to do with the contour ellipses you're drawing at the tips of your sausage forms. You don't really seem to understand what this contour ellipse signifies, and therefore where it should be added. Basically, all the contour lines - ellipses and curves - are the same. They're lines running along the surface of an object. Here, through most of the form, as the contour curves continue along the other side, we can't see them, and so the curve stops, until it picks up again from the opposite edge. When a tip of the form is turned towards the viewer, however, we are able to see the whole way around the surface - meaning we can see the full ellipse. This only happens if the tip is oriented towards the viewer, however. You've drawn them at every tip, every time, including when those tips are not pointing towards us.

It's worth mentioning that your sausage forms are coming along, although you still do have a tendency to end up with ends that are a little more stretched rather than spherical (remember the simple sausage characteristics), but I can see that you are trying to nail it down.

Moving onto your insect constructions, I'm largely going to point out the obvious areas where you've purposely taken action that was contrary to how you should have approached things. This is not going to be about what will improve with practice, and instead will be a matter of ensuring that you know what you should be trying to do.

1. Draw through your forms. You mentioned that you feel your drawings still feel like a bunch of lines and shapes on a flat page. One cause of this is that you are not drawing each and every form you add to the world in its entirety - you are just drawing parts of them, not giving yourself any understanding of how they sit in the world and how they relate to one another. The first step is to draw each form completely, so we can understand how that form exists as a 3D form. A form does not cease to exist once it is overlapped by something else - it's still there, just behind something else. That's how you need to treat the things you draw. Once you've drawn your forms in their entirety, you can also define the relationship in space between the ones that intersect. We do this by drawing a contour line defining the specific intersection between them, and this kind of contour line becomes EXTREMELY effective at convincing you and the viewer that what you've drawn is 3D, because it constantly reminds us of how these forms relate to one another not as shapes on a page, but as 3D forms in a 3D world.

2. As discussed above, you're not wrapping your contour lines around your forms, and instead you're letting them fly right off of their surfaces. Contour lines are an effective tool purely because they give the impression that they're running along the surface of an object. The second they contradict that premise, the whole illusion falls apart.

3. Whenever you draw a form, you must think about how it exists as a 3D form. It's very easy just to put marks down on the page and move on - and based on your work, it does seem quite rushed, like you're not necessarily applying the ghosting method, not really familiarizing yourself with the specific form you want to draw, not necessarily thinking about the specific job you want that form to accomplish within your drawing. Above all else, you need to really respect how that form exists in three dimensions, the weight of it, its solidity. If you don't believe you're drawing a 3D form, and if you don't give each and every form that individual focus and attention, then you're just going to be drawing a bunch of loose approximations on the page. Adding a few haphazard contour lines won't do it - in fact, more often than that, a single well planned contour line (like those contour ellipses on the tips of our forms I explained as part of the contour curves exercise), when placed with forethought and planning can be immensely effective to make a single form feel solid. Take a look at this. Observe how I've taken my time to draw the initial shape carefully - I'm not rushing, not trying to get it down on the page as quickly as possible. I'm drawing with confidence, but that doesn't mean I'm drawing fast. It just means I'm working without hesitation, without steering things with my eyes, just trusting in my muscles. With a smooth, simple shape in place, I can then show how it exists in 3D space with one or two simple, well executed contour lines. Again - I'm not rushing. The contour ellipse on the tip does the most work here, and the additional contour line in the middle adds just a little extra.

4. I can see places where you're trying to apply aspects of the sausage method for constructing your legs, but you're not necessarily following all of the steps involved in it. Looking back on this diagram, it involves certain requirements. First, each sausage must abide by the "simple" sausage characteristics. Meaning it should have ends that are spherical and of equal size, and the sausage should maintain a consistent width through its length. No pinching, no swelling, etc. Drawing a sausage like this can be pretty difficult, especially when executing every mark as quickly as you can. Now, remember that the ghosting method talks about executing your marks with confidence - as I mentioned a bit earlier, this doesn't mean drawing everything blazingly fast. Just drawing without any hesitation, without steering with your eyes, and therefore no wobbling. For beginners this means drawing quickly, but as you practice and get used to the ghosting method, you'll be able to experiment with decreasing your speed while maintaining confidence to achieve a little additional control. Next, your simple sausages need to overlap and intersect one another, not simply touch slightly. Third, we need to reinforce the intersection between them with a single contour curve that defines their relationship in 3D space. This helps make all the sausages feel solid and three dimensional. Now, you do some of these steps in some places, but generally you're missing at least one aspect of these required steps. You need to apply these principles consistently throughout every single insect. Even in cases where you feel a chain of simple sausages doesn't capture the specific leg you're seeing, that's fine - all we're doing is building an underlying structore or armature that captures both the illusion of solidity and the sense of gestural flow. Once that has been established, we can then bulk up areas as shown here to better reflect the specific insect's actual leg.

The last thing I want to say is that it does overall still look to me as though you're drawing through this stuff pretty quickly. One thing I would like to know is how much time you actually spend on each individual drawing. One thing I see students doing on occasion is drawing in a manner where they want their instincts to do the work. Often we'll see artists on youtube and such drawing with such fluidity and confidence, as though they're not even thinking about where the lines go. They rely on their instincts to do all the heavy lifting, all they're concerned with is the rough impression of how they want their result to turn out.

The thing is, though, that your instincts are basically non-existent right now. You have nothing to fall back on. What we're doing through this process is drawing everything consciously, specifically, in a planned and careful fashion because that is what it takes to train those instincts. By working slowly and patiently here, we develop the underlying sense and understanding of how objects exist in 3D space. It's like learning to walk - when you started, you had to take every step carefully and purposefully, otherwise you'd fall on your face and hurt yourself. Now, you don't even need to think about how you're going to do it - you just think you want to go in a particular direction, and off your body takes you.

The punishment for failing to take your time with every single mark you draw, every single stroke, is not as immediate and painful as when learning to walk however, and so it's a lot easier to just keep rushing through without even realizing that you're rushing. I mean, you know that you're working your ass off, but you may simply have a different expectation of what is involved in really devoting as much time as is required to every stroke.

One thing that may help is to look at ScyllaStew's YouTube channel. She's my girlfriend, and in exchange for living rent free, I have her work through Drawabox and record/stream every single little bit of it in real time. She's finishing up Lesson 2 right now, but she does an excellent job of showing just how much time can be invested into each exercise. You can see her work on the organic forms with contour lines here - though you'll have to skip ahead further to get into the actual exercise itself.

So, with long critique, I'll assign you your next steps below.