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

Starting with your organic intersections these are looking solid, nicely done. You're demonstrating a good grasp of how these forms slump and sag around each other with a shared sense of gravity.

Keep in mind that this exercise works best when you work by piling new forms on top of the ones you have already drawn. If you try to wedge a form underneath something you've already drawn, which is what I believe is happening in the lower middle area of this page, then there won't be any space under your existing form to fit the new one in, and you'll have to pinch the form instead of keeping it simple.

Something that will help you to get more out of this exercise in future is to draw through all your forms. This will help you to get e better understanding of how these forms exist in 3D space. This isn't a mistake per se, as it's not clearly shown in the exercise instructions, but if you watch the accompanying video, you'll see Uncomfortable demonstrates how to draw through your forms for this exercise.

Your shadows are coming along well, you're pushing them boldly enough to read as cast shadows and they are showing consideration of not only the forms casting them, but also the curvature of the surfaces they are being cast onto.

Moving on to your animal constructions your work is honestly very well done. Your lines are clear and purposeful and you're showing a strong understanding of how all the pieces of your constructions connect together in 3D space.

There's not an awful lot to criticise, so I'll go over the main points of this lesson and see if I can offer any additional tips or advice as we go.

First I check if students are applying their lesson 4 feedback by taking actions on their constructions that reinforce the 3D illusion, by avoiding altering the silhouettes of forms they have already drawn, and instead adding new, complete 3D forms whenever they want to build or alter something.

I'm happy to see that you've avoided cutting back inside forms you have already drawn, and you're mostly doing an excellent job of building your constructions with complete 3D forms instead. There are a few places where you've made a quick addition with a single line, here is an example marked in blue. Or sometimes you'll add a partial shape instead of a complete form with its own fully enclosed silhouette, here is an example, on one of your zebra.

I also check to see if students are making use of the sausage method of leg construction, and I'm happy to see that after I gave you a reminder about it on Discord you've done an excellent job, good work. There are a few places where you're missing the contour line to define the intersection between sausage sections, but they are present in most cases. It's still worth mentioning that using contour lines to define how different forms connect to one another is an incredibly useful tool (and one you use fairly well). It saves us from having to add other stand-alone contour lines along the length of individual forms, and reinforces the illusion of solidity very effectively.

I think it may help you to take a look at these notes on foot construction which demonstrate how we can introduce structure to the feet using a boxy form, then use more smaller boxy forms for the toes. As of now I'm seeing a tendency on some of your pages to try to describe toes with single lines, which doesn't quite provide enough information to understand how they exist in 3D space.

One key area to discuss in lesson 5 is additional masses. Its great that you're making liberal use of additional masses throughout your pages, and their design is generally quite strong, you're doing a good job of wrapping them around the underlying structures in a way that feels believable.

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.

My main point of contention with your additional masses is that sometimes you'll draw an additional mass, without giving it it's own fully enclosed silhouette. Here is an example on one of your zebra. I think you meant to draw an additional mass here, but without completing it, we don't have a clear 3D relationship between the new form and the underlying structures.

You've made a great start with exploring the use of additional masses to build on your leg structures, but this can be pushed farther. A lot of these focus primarily on forms that actually impact the silhouette of the overall leg, but there's value in exploring the forms that exist "internally" within that silhouette - like the missing puzzle piece that helps to further ground and define the ones that create the bumps along the silhouette's edge. Here is an example of what I mean, from another student's work - as you can see, Uncomfortable has blocked out masses along the leg there, and included the one fitting in between them all, even though it doesn't influence the silhouette. This way of thinking - about the inside of your structures, and fleshing out information that isn't just noticeable from one angle, but really exploring the construction in its entirety, will help you yet further push the value of these constructional exercises and puzzles.

Where you've added texture to your crocodile you've done a great job of wrapping these details around the surfaces of the 3D forms of your construction. It does get a bit explicit in places, which makes it difficult to control the density of detail.

Oh, and just a quick note, remember to draw around your ellipses 2 full times before lifting your pen of the page, even if you feel like you can nail them in a single pass. This is something we ask you to do for every ellipse you freehand in this course, as explained here. You're usually doing this correctly for the larger ellipses of your major masses, but I noticed with smaller ellipses such as on the horns of this buffalo you do drop the ball a little bit on this.

The last topic to discuss head construction.

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:

1- 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.

2- 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.

3- 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.

I can see that you've made a pretty concerted effort to apply this method to the majority of your head constructions, and you're getting some solid results. Sometimes it seems like it's not a good fit for certain heads, but as shown in in this banana-headed rhino it can be adapted for a wide array of animals.

So, great work. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Feel free to move on to the 250 Cylinder Challenge, which is a prerequisite for lesson 6.