9:54 PM, Saturday September 18th 2021
Starting with your organic intersections, these are coming along pretty well. You're doing a good job of demonstrating how these forms interact with one another, slumping and sagging under the weight of gravity. One thing I do want to stress for this exercise however is that you avoid adding more sausages along the bottom later on in the process. Think of it as though you're building up a pile - every new element is added on top. In this case that is especially important because once a form has been drawn, we can't have it respond to the presence of something beneath it after the fact - meaning that if you try and sneak something else underneath, you risk creating inconsistencies where that older form should have bent in a different way to compensate for what's now beneath it.
Continuing onto your animal constructions, there are a lot of areas where you're doing quite well and applying the principles fairly effectively, but there are also some cases where you break certain points I've raised previously in other critiques, so we'll address that again to make sure you understand how to best approach these kinds of problems.
The first one that stands out is the point I raised back in Lesson 4, where I explained the importance of always interacting with your work as though it is a solid, tangible, three dimensional structure - and avoiding jumping back into 2D space to take little shortcuts like altering the silhouette of a form once it's already been constructed. For example, if you look at this horse, I've highlighted numerous places where you attempted to change the nature of the torso structure by both cutting into its silhouette (in red) and extending it out (in blue). While this kind of approach works in Lesson 3's leaves and petals, that's because they're already flat. When we try to apply the same approach to forms that are already voluminous, it causes them to flatten out, as explained in these notes from Lesson 3's informal demo section. I also shared a number of other diagrams explaining this concept in my last critique of your work, so be sure to go over that Lesson 4 feedback again.
The whole concern about focusing on viewing what you're drawing as though it is real, solid, and three dimensional is a pretty big deal - it relies heavily on ensuring that every form we draw is treated as being a new, concrete addition to the structure, like a new chunk of solid stone. I did notice in some cases, you had a tendency of drawing those initial masses with a much fainter line, as can be seen on that same horse drawing. This suggests to me that you're trying to separate your drawing into elements that aren't really part of your end result, and elements that are. When we approach a drawing in this manner, we become more largely predisposed to cutting across their silhouettes or interacting with those forms as though they're just flat shapes on a flat page. Instead, be sure to draw all your structures with the same kind of confidence, accepting that each piece is in fact something solid and real being added to the structure.
Now, you did do a much better job of this when you got into the legs of your animals - I can see clearly that on that horse's legs you were trying to build upon it with separate, fully enclosed forms. There are however things that can be improved, as shown in these notes right on the page:
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Make sure that you draw your sausage forms in their entirety, even when they get overlapped by other structures. Drawing through forms is important to understand how they relate to one another in 3D space. And of course, always strive to stick to the characteristics of simple sausages - can't do that if the forms are getting cut off where they intersect with the rest of the structure.
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You're making great headway with the use of additional masses on the horse's legs, though don't just focus on the masses that will impact the silhouette. Try adding internal masses as well that help bridge the gap between the masses that poke out at the silhouette.
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When drawing your hooves, or any other feet structures, it's very common to just do so with a silhouette, leaving out internal edges as you've done here. We still do, however, have to imply that the hooves are three dimensional. We can do that by adding specific, intentional corners to those silhouette shapes, as these corners can help imply the presence of distinct front/side/top planes, making the form read as being more 3D.
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This one isn't relevant to the legs/build up of forms, but I added it anyway - when drawing the mane, or any kind of fur/hair/tufts, be sure to build each one individually off the simpler structure, and be sure to aim for a more cohesive, closed off silhouette. You can have a few gaps, but they need to be strategically placed, and intentionally so, rather than just placed all over at random. The prevalence of gaps here really makes the mane feel like a bunch of separate marks, rather than a single cohesive element. Admittedly the use of fur on this wolf is considerably more in line with what I'm saying here.
That same wolf also demonstrates head construction that is coming along quite nicely. While you haven't included all the elements from the head construction explanation from the informal demos page (the forehead/brow ridge area was neglected, which risks having the ears slide down and encroach on its territory), you did a great job here of demonstrating how the eye sockets and muzzles and cheek area all wedges together as a solid, three dimensional puzzle. This is an approach you didn't apply as thoroughly in some other drawings - your standing bear for instance had vastly different eye socket shapes (the upturned pentagon in the demo is very useful as it creates a nice wedge shape between them for the muzzle, and a flat surface for the brow ridge/forehead). I also noticed that this bear's cranial ball started off quite wide, with you trying to jump into filling out that space perhaps too early, rather than building your way there. This larger scale for the cranial ball can cause everything else to get kind of squashed, so I would definitely recommend starting smaller initially.
There are some others as well where you ended up with larger gaps between the components of the face - the ibex for instance. In the construction of the head - and really in construction in general - always try and keep the construction grounded, establishing how pieces fit into one another. This will help each piece reinforce the illusion that its neighbour is three dimensional. When they float more loosely relative to one another, we fall back into the territory of looking at a flat, two dimensional drawing.
Now, as a whole I do feel you're very much moving in the right direction. Part of me wants to pass you on right now and to avoid having to critique any follow-ups, but at the same time, the more responsible instructor part of me would like to see a couple more drawings. While I want to see you demonstrate your understanding of all the points I've raised here, most of all I want to see you drawing those initial masses more confidently - avoiding that tendency of drawing them to be fainter, and less solid. So, complete the entirety of each construction with the same general line thickness, then come back at the very end to add line weight to key, specific, localized areas to help clarify particular overlaps rather than creating visually distinct phases to your drawing, or breaking them up between construction/clean up pass. Every stage should be a part of the final drawing.
Next Steps:
Please submit 3 additional pages of animal constructions.