Hello Kinen_Inugami, I'll be the teaching assistant handling your lesson 5 critique.

Starting with your organic intersections these are coming along well. You're doing a good job of establishing how the forms pile upon one another, slumping and sagging under the forces of gravity. Your application of cast shadows is coming along nicely - you're doing a good job of pushing forward boldly, and keeping that consistent light source in mind.

Moving on to your animal constructions, there’s a fair bit that you’re handling well here, and a few areas where I can offer some advice or clarify certain points. It looks like you’re making an effort to stick to the principles of markmaking, and you’re also doing a good job of following the general construction process, by starting with simple solid forms, and building the construction up gradually, usually without attempting to add more complexity than can be supported by the existing structures at any given stage in the construction. I also appreciate that you’re very diligently “drawing through” your forms where they overlap and including the parts you can’t see in the reference, which is great as it will help you develop a stronger understanding of how the entire form sits in 3D space, good work.

While I think you’re probably aiming to build these up like 3D puzzles, there are a few constructions in the set where you hop back into taking actions in 2D, by extending off existing forms with one-off lines or flat partial shapes, and I’ve highlighted a few examples of this with blue on your frog. The thing is, the blue areas exist only in two dimensions - there is no clearly defining elements that help the viewer (or you, for that matter) to understand how they are meant to relate to the other 3D elements at play. Thus, it reminds us that we're drawing something flat and two dimensional, and in so doing, reinforces that fact to you as you construct it. Creating believable, solid, three dimensional constructions despite drawing on a flat page requires us to first and foremost convince ourselves of this illusion, this lie we're telling, as discussed here back in Lesson 2. The more our approach reinforces the illusion, the more we make new marks that reinforce it even further. The more our marks break the illusion, the more marks we make that then further break the illusion, for us and for everyone else.

While in this course we're doing everything very explicitly, it's to create such a solid belief and understanding of how the things we draw exist in 3D space, that when we draw them more loosely with sketching and other less explicit approaches, we can still produce marks that fall in line with the idea that this thing we're drawing exists in 3D.

For the head, it helps to define a “footprint” where the muzzle connects to the surface of the cranial ball, and then extrude it as a simple boxy form, which you did pretty well in quite a few of your other constructions.

Lesson 5 has a lot of different strategies for constructing heads, between the various demos. Given how the course has developed, and how Uncomfortable is finding new, more effective ways for students to tackle certain problems. So not all the approaches shown are equal, but they do have their uses. As it stands, as explained at the top of the tiger demo page (here), the current approach that is the most generally useful, as well as the most meaningful in terms of these drawings all being exercises in spatial reasoning, is what you'll find here in this informal head demo.

There are a few key points to this approach:

• The specific shape of the eye sockets - the specific pentagonal shape allows for a nice wedge in which the muzzle can fit in between the sockets, as well as a flat edge across which we can lay the forehead area.

• This approach focuses heavily on everything fitting together - no arbitrary gaps or floating elements. This allows us to ensure all of the different pieces feel grounded against one another, like a three dimensional puzzle.

• We have to be mindful of how the marks we make are cuts along the curving surface of the cranial ball - working in individual strokes like this (rather than, say, drawing the eye socket with an ellipse) helps a lot in reinforcing this idea of engaging with a 3D structure.

It looks like you are somewhat familiar with this method, having drawn along with the demo, and I can see you applying the key points described above to some of your constructions, such as this leopard. Try your best to stick with this method when doing constructional drawing exercises using animals in the future, as closely as you can. Sometimes it seems like it's not a good fit for certain heads, but as shown in in this rhino head demo it can be adapted for a wide array of animals.

Something that I think will help you with the feet is to introduce structure to the foot by drawing a boxy form- that is, a form whose corners are defined in such a way that they imply the distinction between the different planes within its silhouette, without necessarily having to define those edges themselves - to lay down a structure that reads as being solid and three dimensional. Then we can use similarly boxy forms to attach toes. You can see a visual example with these notes on foot construction and I’d like you to try this strategy in your future feet constructions.

It does look like you’re having a bit of trouble using the sausage method of leg construction. There are many pages such as this leopard where you’re constructing your legs using ellipses which are not sausage forms. Aim to stick to the properties of two round ends of equal size, connected by a bendy tube of consistent width, for every leg sausage. You are also quite prone to forgetting to add the contour line at each joint which we draw to explain how the forms intersect in 3D space, like the contour lines introduced in the form intersections exercise.

In your previous critique I shared 4 diagrams and demos designed to help you to build up onto your leg armatures in 3D, using complete additional forms attached to the sausages. I’m not seeing very much evidence of this information being applied, you tend to favor altering your legs with one-off lines, as I’ve highlighted in blue on this deer.

On this image I’ve replaced a lot of the one-off lines with additional masses. I’m happy to see that you’ve been experimenting with additional masses on the majority of your constructions, although it can be quite puzzling to figure out exactly how to design their silhouette in a way that feels convincing.

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.

You might have noticed that I made some alterations to the additional masses on the torso of your deer. Here I’m trying to demonstrate how to wrap them more boldly around the side of the body to give them a firmer grip. I’m also making use of the protruding shoulder and thigh masses to help anchor the additional masses to the torso. The more interlocked they are, the more spatial relationships we define between the masses, the more solid and grounded everything appears.

The last thing I’ll mention before wrapping this up is that there are some pages, such as this pony, where you’re still adding line weight to most of the silhouette, instead of using it as a tool for clarifying overlaps between forms and reserving it for localised areas where those overlaps occur as discussed in this video. Tracing back over the silhouette in this manner causes small alterations to your various forms’ silhouettes, undermining their solidity.

Alright, I think that should cover it. Overall you’re not far off here, but there are a couple of points that I would like you to demonstrate your understanding of prior to moving forwards. I’m going to ask you for some (fairly minor) revisions. Please complete 2 pages of quadruped constructions, focusing on only taking actions in 3D, correct use of the sausage method of leg construction, and reserving any additional line weight for clarifying overlaps between forms.