Jumping right in with your organic intersections, your work here is looking great. You're doing an excellent job of capturing the relationships between these forms as they slump and sag under the weight of gravity, as well as through the use of cast shadows which believably and realistically wrap around the surfaces upon which they're cast. Just one quick thing - I did notice a tendency to cut off your cast shadows a little early at times, as shown here in red.

Continuing onto your animal constructions, as a whole you've done a pretty great job, but there are a few things I can call out that should help you continue to get as much as you can out of these exercises. To that point, I do find it helps to reiterate the notion that what we're doing here isn't really about replicating the things we see in our references. Rather, each drawing is just that - an exercise - or rather, a puzzle. We start with a series of simple forms, and we gradually figure out how to work in the direction of our reference image (which serves as a source of information) by adding new forms to the existing structure and defining how they relate to it in 3D space.

So - while there are inevitably areas where we'll encounter complex and abnormal objects in our references, the work we're doing here is more focused on the "common" situations, as at the end of the day, each lesson is really focusing on these same kinds of spatial puzzles, in order to gradually develop our brain's internal model of 3D space.

That said, for your axolotl, you can certainly still make do with the head construction demo from the informal demos page, which as explained at the top of the tiger head demo (and with more detail here in this answer to another student explaining why it isn't more present throughout the main lesson material) is the approach which is the most consistent with the core principles we try to adhere to throughout this course. Here's a rough idea of how it'd apply to the axolotl.

Now, as to the other points I want to call out in regards to your work:

• I can see that you're making a fair bit of use of additional masses, although the way in which their silhouettes are designed is not ideal for establishing the relationships between these structures. Rather, you tend to draw the masses however, and then attempt to make them feel individually solid through the use of contour lines, sometimes then wrapping the structure they're attached to as well as the new mass in another outline to try and "bind" them together. Unfortunately, this binds them together in 2D space rather than 3D, and actually results in the addition of new 2D shapes (which we discussed in Lesson 4's critique as something to avoid). 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. We can see this in action with this more purposefully designed mass. Note how the inward curves are placed where we wrap around the mass at the hip (giving us something to integrate our structure with, making the body more of a 3D puzzle and giving all of the components a greater sense of groundedness) and where we wrap around the torso sausage. Everywhere else, we employ simpler outward curves, where no contact is being made with external structures.

• This point - that is, the importance of how we design our silhouettes - also applies quite a bit to the additional masses you've added to your leg structures. Remember that what we're doing here is not simply adding blobs and "solving it later". Once the form is down, there's no way to alter its silhouette without.. well... altering its silhouette.

• And to that point, you end up cutting back into the silhouette of your torso - also something we mentioned back in Lesson 4's critique that should be avoided. Here I show how you may have approached it instead - the greyhound's body is admittedly quite unique, and so it does require some adjustment to the original torso structure, but in using this approach we're able to work in a strictly additive fashion. Of course, then the question may arise - what if you drew the torso in the way you had, and had to move forward from there? Well, in that case, that "tuck" in the greyhound's belly area would simply not be achievable - and for the purposes of our exercises here, that's okay. Again, we're not trying to reproduce the reference perfectly. It's just a source of information, allowing us to pull from it to create something believable and solid on the page.

• Stepping back to my first bullet point, I should mention that contour lines - specifically as they were first introduced in the organic forms with contour lines exercise, are very easy to overuse. That exercise is a great way to introduce the concept, but in truth you're rarely going to end up in a situation where you actually benefit from piling several of them onto a single form. These contour lines will certainly take a simpler form and make it feel solid and 3D in isolation (not in relation to other objects, which is why it didn't work so well for our additional masses - it's defining the forms in relation to the existing structure that we want there), but just one - maybe two - is enough. Students do have a tendency to pile more of them on however, if they're not always thinking about the purpose and intent behind each and every mark they make. For this, the ghosting method's planning phase is an opportune moment to take and really ask yourself, "what is this mark for", "how can I execute it such that it'll accomplish its task as effectively as possible," and "are there any other marks that are already doing this job for me". The planning phase of the ghosting method is all about this kind of reflection, to ensure that we do not put down marks wastefully, or without purpose.

• Similarly to the first point about designing the silhouettes of our additional masses, in your bison you end up working with a single mass that attempts to accomplish a number of different things at once. This results in inward curves where there's nothing actually pressing against it (like along the top edge of the mass). Instead, as shown here, this would be better handled with multiple masses, piled on top of one another.

Now, as a whole your work here is very well done. The issues I've called out are important insofar as the exercise itself, but you've done a great job of capturing fairly solid structures, with a great sense of movement and life - especially with the running greyhound. That said, because my interest is primarily in ensuring that students demonstrate a good grasp of how they are to tackle these exercises specifically, in order to continue refining their grasp of 3D space, I will be asking for a limited set of revisions. You'll find them assigned below.