In regards to your concerns, I have a couple things to mention:

  • Firstly, keep in mind that what this course focuses on is essentially showing students how to practice and develop their spatial reasoning skills. That is to say, while students invariably do demonstrate clear improvement and development in that area throughout the course (as is apparent in your work as well), the purpose is to introduce you to a series of exercises that will help you continue to develop those skills as you progress beyond this course. The constructional drawing exercises we do throughout lessons 3-7 are the main exercises we employ for developing our understanding of 3D space, which is why we devote so much time to them and look at their application across a variety of subject matter and contexts. It is entirely normal for students to have plenty of room for further growth and improvement when reaching the end of the course.

  • That said, one thing I do frequently advise students against is giving too much credence to the non-specific suspicions we may feel that we're doing something wrong, or not understanding something in particular. Most people are predisposed to assuming that there's more they need to know, that there's something they're not applying correctly, or whatever. While there is validity to many of those suspicions in a general level, on that same general level acknowledging them is not particularly useful, because they don't give us specific paths forward to address them, given the non-specific nature of the concern. What they certainly do however is nurture a mindset of self-doubt where feeling any sense of confidence of certainty in one's progress and actions is undermined, and continually so, in favour of thoughts of doubt. There ends up being a degree of comfort in this feeling of "missing something", in the sense that if we're not missing anything, then perhaps this is all we can do. Which of course is not the case, given that there's a wide gap between understanding the concepts well enough, and being able to apply them fully. To get back on track, my recommendation in this area is to give yourself a rule - if you have specific concerns, specific areas of weakness you can point to and name in your own work, then we can treat them as being real, and by virtue of their specificity, they become actionable (by giving us specific questions to ask, and resources/courses to pursue to address them). If however the concern is amorphous, general, and non-specific, then treat it as a product of your own self-doubt. Not worth giving attention, because even if it is true, it doesn't exactly give us any path forward.

When it comes to where to go from here, I find that the 50% rule is an invaluable tool for identifying one's next steps. In indulging in drawing the things we're interested in without concern for how our current limitations might impact the end result, we reveal the areas of weakness that need to be sured up. That is not to say that all areas of weakness need to be addressed - but rather that those such areas identified by the 50% rule are by definition the things that are necessary for the things we want to be able to draw. While I don't see any non-drawabox work on your tumblr since the last promptathon, I assume you've been holding to the 50% rule (as required by the course) and simply haven't posted it. So, go back over that work, perhaps consider sharing it with others (so as to benefit from multiple sets of eyes), and that should give you a direction in which to push next.

Anyway, fortunately your work for this lesson is largely well done, allowing me more time to spend on your concerns/questions - but let's get onto looking at that lesson work.

Starting with your fomr intersections, the intersection lines generally demonstrate a good grasp of how these different forms relate to one another in space. The only notable issue I noticed was here in the intersection between the sphere and the cone. Always remember that when an intersection line hits the edge between two surfaces (in this case the edge between the base of the cone and the length of the cone), the intersection line is going to depict this shift in trajectory with a sharp corner, as shown here.

Similarly, your cylinders in boxes are coming along well, and you're demonstrating the correct use of the line extensions to ensure that you're always analyzing the errors and identifying how your approach next set can be adjusted.

Continuing onto your vehicle constructions, as a whole you've done very well, though I have a few points to offer to help keep you getting the most out of these exercises. As you're probably aware, we're continually working (as much as the never-ending tide of homework submissions allows) to take what we've learned in regards to explaining these concepts from writing the critiques and reintegrate them into the lesson material. In this regard, those submitting for official critique receive what is in effect a sneak peek at what all students will eventually have access to.

One of these points relates to how we can take the principles introduced in Lesson 6 and built upon here in Lesson 7 relating to the use of orthographic plans, and ultimately get more out of them. Looking at this page, we can see that you've worked with a fairly consistent level of subdivision across all of the front view, and most of the side view - though in the side view, you appeared to be more purposeful in terms of where you subdivided further, and how you went about it. The way you handled it in the front view is more akin to what's demonstrated in the lessons, but being more purposeful and applying subdivision more where it's needed, rather than all over the place, is a step towards getting even more out of these orthographic plans. But we can take it even further.

As shown here, I've marked out certain landmarks by drawing red lines extending from the position of that landmark out to the edge of the orthographic plan. Each of these landmarks are things we can kind of roughly estimate when moving onto our 3D construction, but they do require more decision making as we progress forward with the construction. Instead, if we can identify these major landmarks ("major" is subjective, but there's definitely going to be landmarks that are more important for capturing the core elements of the structure, and some that will be comparatively less important), then we can do more of that decision-making upfront and simply leave ourselves to follow the formula we've already set out when building up the 3D construction. In turn, this allows us to focus our attention on more singular tasks, breaking the complex ones down into more discrete steps.

The key point here is that it's about making decisions - rather than focusing on "finding" the correct position for a given landmark. For example, we could look at the upper red line here (which defines the height of the bump along the mustang's hood), we could say that if we're being as accurate as possible, it's positioned 54/100ths along the height of the bounding box, from its base - but that would be incredibly cumbersome to actually subdivide, and wouldn't really give us any visible benefit. Conversely, we could say that based on its position, that bump's highest edge sits at 13/24ths from the base. Not approximately, not roughly - rather, this is the exact proportion we'll be using for our construction. A decision made.

13/24ths may seem non-specific, but you've already got some subdivisions narrowed down almost that far. As shown here, you've got some subdivisions down to the 12th, so it would be as straightforward as taking one such section and subdividing it once more to get 24ths.

This may seem nitpicky - and I'm by no means pointing this out as a mistake, as it was not something covered in the current lesson material - but it's all in the vein of taking our complex tasks and breaking them down into simpler ones, and ultimately getting as many of the major decisions made ahead of time so that the unavoidably complex task of actually building it up in 3D space is as free from unnecessary decision making as possible.

Another point that works well with this and helps in achieving it a great deal is to ensure that as explained here in Lesson 6, you're approaching all of your curves first as a chain of flat faces or straight edges, only to round them out towards the end. The benefit here is that representing a curve as a chain of straight lines requires us to decide where we're putting our sharp corners, how many such corners to include, etc. A curve doesn't really have much in the way of clear landmarks, but a chain of straight edges does, making it more conducive to this kind of use both in the orthographic plans, and in their application in 3D space. This would be particularly useful for constructions like this one.

And that about covers it! All in all, very good work, and you're clearly demonstrating a solid grasp of the material. Hopefully the additional information I've provided will help you continue to push forwards with it, but as it stands, I'm pleased with your progress and am happy to mark this lesson - and the course as a whole - as complete. Congratulations!