Starting with your organic forms with contour curves, there are a few points of concern here:

• The most notable issue is really just that there are a lot of instances where your markmaking is pretty haphazard when it comes to drawing your contour lines. It seems very much to me that you're kind of thinking on the page, jumping right into making the mark, rather than applying the ghosting method's planning and preparation phases beforehand. While we certainly are working with fineliners which are quite unforgiving when we make a mistake, this is largely because it doesn't allow us to hide things like rushing into those marks, or a lack of preplanning and consideration for each and every stroke.

• The assignment was to do 2 pages of contour curves - you did one of contour ellipses. Not a huge deal, just be sure to read those instructions more carefully so you do the right exercise.

• You're generally sticking pretty closely to the characteristics of simple sausages, though watch out for cases where you end up with one end either smaller than the other, or more stretched out (rather than maintaining a circular shape).

• Lastly, right now you appear to be drawing your contour lines with roughly the same degree throughout their lengths. As discussed in the Lesson 1 ellipses video, as we slide away from the viewer along a cylindrical structure, the degree of its cross-sections will get wider. This is also impacted by how that tube structure turns through space, but farther = wider is a good rule of thumb to follow.

While your work on that exercise was admittedly somewhat shoddier than I think you're capable of, your insect constructions have by and large come along quite well, and a number of your constructions provide a pretty strong impression of how these structures exist in three dimensional space. This is something I will provide some advice on how to push even farther however, most specifically by highlighting the distinction between actions we take that occur in 2D, with marks that are drawn only with consideration for how they exist on the flat page, and actions that we take in 3D, drawing complete, self-enclosed forms that reflect consideration for both how they relate to the other forms present in the scene, and how those different forms connect to one another in three dimensions.

Because we're drawing on a flat piece of paper, we have a lot of freedom to make whatever marks we choose - it just so happens that the majority of those marks will contradict the illusion you're trying to create and remind the viewer that they're just looking at a series of lines on a flat piece of paper. In order to avoid this and stick only to the marks that reinforce the illusion we're creating, we can force ourselves to adhere to certain rules as we build up our constructions. Rules that respect the solidity of our construction.

For example - once you've put a form down on the page, do not attempt to alter its silhouette. Its silhouette is just a shape on the page which represents the form we're drawing, but its connection to that form is entirely based on its current shape. If you change that shape, you won't alter the form it represents - you'll just break the connection, leaving yourself with a flat shape. We can see this most easily in this example of what happens when we cut back into the silhouette of a form.

For some students, these kinds of issues show up in pretty significant ways, with students redefining forms they've drawn all over the place. In your case, it's generally a lot smaller and subtler - but it's still important, because these little things can accumulate and ultimately undermine our own understanding of how the structure is meant to exist in 3D space. So, we can see a number of little cases here on this page for example. In red are the cases where you cut into existing forms' silhouettes, and in blue is where you built off them.

We can also see similar things here on this weevil, but the lines I highlighted in green are actually the solution - they define the way in which those forms attach to the main abdomen, and although you were a little timid in drawing them, you did a lot in considering how they'd actually run along the surface of the abdomen in order to wrap around it.

Whenever we want to build upon our construction or change something, we can do so by introducing new 3D forms to the structure - forms with their own fully self-enclosed silhouettes - and by establishing how those forms either connect or relate to what's already present in our 3D scene. We can do this either by defining the intersection between them with contour lines (like in lesson 2's form intersections exercise), or by wrapping the silhouette of the new form around the existing structure as shown here.

This is all part of accepting that everything we draw is 3D, and therefore needs to be treated as such in order for the viewer to believe in that lie.

You can see this in practice in this beetle horn demo, as well as in this ant head demo. You can also see some good examples of this in the lobster and shrimp demos on the informal demos page. As I've been pushing this concept more recently, it hasn't been fully integrated into the lesson material yet (it will be when the overhaul reaches Lesson 4). Until then, those submitting for official critiques basically get a preview of what is to come.

Continuing on from there, I am noticing a general tendency to apply the sausage method as a starting point for your leg constructions - which is correct - there are ways in which we can build upon them that adhere to these principles of "additive" construction as described above. Once the basic sausage structure is in place, we can then build on top of this base structure with more additional forms as shown here, here, in this ant leg, and even here in the context of a dog's leg (because this technique is still to be used throughout the next lesson as well).

Just remember the specific requirements of the sausage method, as shown in this diagram:

• Stick to the characteristics of simple sausages even when they don't appear to fit the leg you're constructing. 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.

• Always ensure those sausages overlap enough, and define the joint/intersection between them with a contour line. Do not put contour lines anywhere else along their lengths.

And that about covers it! As a whole you've done a great job, though do be sure to practice those organic forms with contour curves more as you push forwards, as part of your warmups. Based on what you've drawn in your insect constructions, there's no reason for your markmaking to be that haphazard.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete.