I'll be the TA handling your Lesson 2 critique.

You're making progress towards understanding the concepts introduced in this lesson and hopefully this critique will help you in your future attempts.

• Starting off in the arrows section your lines are looking smoothly and confidently drawn. There are spots where your arrows bulge/narrow suddenly, this is an issue because it gives the impression that your arrows are stretching which hurts their solidity. Remember that as our arrows move closer to the viewer we want them to widen consistently. This is a good exercise to experiment with line weight but when applying it we want to make sure we do subtly to key areas like overlaps to give clarity to our forms. Here are some things to look out for when applying line weight, and here are some reminders on how to apply it subtly. At times you don't overlap your edges when you should, this results in your arrows flattening out as you can see here. I'd like you to experiment more with foreshortening in your future attempts, by utilizing it in both the arrows themselves as well as the negative space between their curves we can create a stronger illusion of an object moving through 3D space as demonstrated here.

• Moving into the organic forms with contours exercise your forms are getting a bit too complex. We want to create our forms with both ends being the same size and to avoid any pinching, bloating, or stretching along the form's length as discussed here. Some of your line work here shows a lack of confidence which results in stiffness, remember that our first priority is that we want all of our linework/ellipses/contours to be drawn confidently and mileage will improve our accuracy. Speaking of contours I'd like you to try and shift the degree of your contours more. The degree of a contour line basically represents the orientation of that cross-section in space, relative to the viewer, and as we slide along the sausage form, the cross section is either going to open up (allowing us to see more of it) or turn away from the viewer (allowing us to see less), as shown here.

• To be honest your submission gives me the impression that you may have been rushing (intentionally or not) through this lesson rather than taking the time to understand some of the concepts being introduced and starting in the textures section it becomes more apparent. You're working from memory rather than observing your texture and aren't capturing cast shadows as instructed. This is by no means an easy exercise but I do hope that you'll try to improve your attempts in the future. The reason it's important to focus on cast shadows is it allows us to imply information and create gradients that prevent the viewer from being overwhelmed by too much detail. For more on the importance of focusing on cast shadows read here. I'd also like to quickly direct you to this image which shows that when we're working with thin line like textures if we outline and fill the shadow we will create a much more dynamic texture than simply drawing lines.

• In the form intersections exercise you're drawing a lot of forms but they're hastily done and needed to be planned more. Fewer larger forms that were planned would be an easier task while also giving you a better understanding of what you're attempting to achieve. You often didn't draw the intersections at all either.

• Moving into the organic intersections section you demonstrate moments where you're beginning to understand the 3D space you're attempting to create but it's inconsistent and there are just as many moments that appear flat. You neglect some of the concepts/instructions introduced in the earlier sections which would help quite a bit here. Your lines aren't always confident, you're not consistently hooking your contour curves back into the form as instructed here, and not drawing smaller ellipses on the ends of your forms always or drawing through them. I'd also like you to draw through all of your forms when doing this exercise, much like when we drew our boxes drawing through our forms helps us deepen our understanding of the 3D space we're trying to construct which helps us prevent our image from appearing flat. You are pushing some of your shadows far enough that they cast which is a good start but there are some spots where your shadows just hug the form or there is no shadow at all.

I won't be moving you on to the next lesson just yet, each lesson builds upon each other and I'd like to make sure you understand a few of these concepts a bit more before potentially creating more problems down the road.

With that being said I'd like you to please re-read and complete:

• 4 pages of the form intersections exercise

• 2 pages of the organic intersections exercise

Remember that this is not a critique of you as a person or your character just of your work, being asked to redo work isn't a punishment we just want you to succeed and that at times requires us to revisit something we may not understand yet. Be sure to take your time reading the lesson and put your best effort into your work, do your best not to rush to the end if you feel like you don't fully grasp something just yet. I recommend taking a look at ScyllaStew's videos as well, you can find them here. She went through some of the lessons and recorded the process which is a good example of just how long some of these exercises can take.

Once you've completed the pages mentioned above reply to this critique with a link to them, I'll go over them and address anything that needs to be worked on and once you've shown you're ready for the next lesson I'll move you on.

I look forward to seeing your work.