So there are definitely a lot of areas where we can improve things. As a whole, it's more than we can reasonably tackle in one critique, so I'm going to touch on all the major points, then you'll do some revisions, and we'll move forwards from there.

The biggest issue overall that is holding you back is that while you're moving in the right direction, there is a big part of you that still sees drawing as drawing lines and shapes on a flat piece of paper. You know that you're trying to create a lie, something that isn't real, and that the things you draw are just arbitrary shapes on the page. And because you see through that lie, because you don't actually believe it yourself right now, you are prone to making all kinds of mistakes (both big and little) that undermine the illusions we're trying to make.

Let's first take a look at the organic intersections. This exercise is, conceptually simple. We take take a simple sausage form and we place it on the ground. Then we take another sausage form and we drop it on top of the first. Because it is real, a solid three dimensional form, it is subject to gravity, and therefore it is going to fall down and flop over the first in such a way that reflects the forces pushing down on it. We're familiar and comfortable with the idea of gravity in real life - we know what would happen to a sausage if you were to drape it onto another form - but if you're thinking about this as a 2D shape that you're drawing on the page, then your brain is jumping through all of these hoops of trying to figure out how to fake a realistic result.

The first and most important thing to help us believe that what we're working with is a real, three dimensional sausage form in a 3D world, is to keep it as simple as possible. In this regard, you're pretty inconsistent in sticking to the characteristics of simple sausages as discussed back in lesson 2's organic forms with contour lines exercise. As a result, yours tend to have much more complexity (getting wider/narrower, for example). This inherently makes it easier for us to understand them as flat, 2D shapes, rather than 3D forms, and impedes our ability to believe that we're really working in 3D space.

As a result, we end up with situations like this one where you ended up with a weird gap between your forms, despite the fact that gravity should have pushed that sausage down.

There are other issues with your organic intersections, but since I don't want to dwell on this much more, I'll list them quickly below:

• You tend to fill in void/negative spaces between forms with solid black. Solid black should be reserved ONLY for cast shadows, which means they should be falling on the surfaces of other forms or on the ground rather than just floating in the air.

• Always build upwards - never try to draw a form underneath a form you've already drawn. This is because the forms you draw need to take the forms beneath them into consideration to determine how their silhouettes need to be shaped. If you've already drawn the upper form, it's not going to move in space to allow the new one space to exist.

• Your contour lines are all the same degree, instead of shifting naturally over the length of the form, going wider or narrower as needed.

• You have a couple places where the contour ellipse you've drawn on one end does not match the degree of the other contour curves around it. Here are examples of how those contour ellipses are used.

Moving onto your animal constructions, in order to avoid writing a novel, I'm going to focus on one construction, break down what has gone wrong, and then leave you to try again.

Let's look at this horse. It is actually by far one of your better drawings, specifically in that it is generally more structured and features less random exploration.

What stands out a great deal are the little head explorations on the bottom right. Here you are explicitly working in 2D shapes, which strongly supports the theory I presented earlier - you are thinking of your drawing as lines and shapes on a page, rather than thinking about how every single entity you add to your drawing is a 3D form, existing in 3D space.

That is critically important, and starts from the beginning. When we draw our initial masses, we don't just drop ellipses on the page and move on. We construct solid ball forms, and we have to make sure that we believe that they are three dimensional. If you look at this rat demo from the informal demos page for example, I added little contour ellipses to each of the masses. This wasn't for the viewer's benefit - this was so it would help me reinforce the idea that these forms I've drawn are three dimensional. What matters is that I myself understand that this isn't just a circle on a page - that it's a form whose surface is curving through 3D space, so when I go to draw lines on that sphere, they follow the curvature of that surface.

Similarly, if you look at this simple head construction demonstration, in the first step you'll see little bright red arrows that extend from the corners of the eye sockets. I'm not just thinking about how they run straight across the canvas - I'm thinking about how they start to curve along the surface of the cranial ball.

Next, let's look at how you're employing the additional masses. Here, for each one you've drawn a shape, and then because the shape didn't feel particularly 3D, you drew a contour line over it. Unfortunately, the contour line didn't help with what was really required here.

Contour lines can definitely make a form feel three dimensional, but they can do this in two possible ways. If the contour line sits on the surface of the object (like the organic forms with contour lines exercise), they make that form feel more solid and three dimensional on its own, in isolation. If however we use them like the form intersections exercise, defining the relationship between two forms that are interpenetrating, they'll make both forms feel three dimensional together. This second option is always more effective and more reliable, but unfortunately it only works if our forms are actually cutting into one another, which is not what we're doing with these additional masses.

Instead, the additional masses are separate forms that are being wrapped around an existing structure. It is the way in which that form wraps around the others (like in the organic intersections exercise) that defines the relationship between the forms, and makes both feel three dimensional. This means, however, that all the work is done by the silhouette of your additional mass, and if the silhouette is not drawn while thinking about how you're defining that relationship, you're not going to be able to define that relationship after the fact with a contour line. So, drawing the silhouette is incredibly important.

As shown in this diagram, the silhouette of our additional masses is all determined by thinking about what structure it is being pushed up against. When the mass is floating up in space, it's like a ball or blob of soft meat. It's malleable, but because there's nothing else pressing against it, it curves outward all over, forming a ball. If however we were to push it down onto another form (like the depicted box), the form is going to start curving around that form, adding more complexity along the sides that actually make contact. This forms corners, and inwards curvature.

What this means at its core is that anywhere you include any complexity along the silhouette of an additional mass, you need to be aware of what specific form or structure is actually causing it. Here I've drawn an analysis of your horse, specifically the mass along the pelvis, and then drew a more correct additional mass near the shoulder. It's definitely a little tough to parse, so take your time doing so. The key thing here is that wherever the mass is pushing against a structure, it should be more complex (forming corners and curving inward) and wherever it is pushing against nothing, it should remain simple (curving outwards).

This means that you need to be consciously aware of a lot of the little masses you're building up on the body of your animal. For example, the shoulder mass is important - it's a big driver, so I blocked it in, and then the mass along its neck interacted with it. Once you've added an additional mass, it becomes a part of the "existing structure" - meaning any other form you add needs to be aware of it too.

Here are some additional notes/resources about how to think about additional masses.

Now, this critique has gotten very long, so I'm going to cut it off here by assigning revisions. You'll find them listed below, but there are three restrictions I want you to follow for each of your animal drawings:

• Pick animals you feel will be easier - don't aim for anything you know is going to be more challenging. It's fine if you don't know if something's going to be hard or not - I just want to discourage the tendency for some students to purposely aim for things that are harder, because they feel they'll be more valuable as a learning experience. Stick to simple, easy things with clear forms you can perceive easily. Of course, even these will be difficult.

• I do not want you to use any contour lines that sit on the surface of a single form (like the organic forms with contour lines exercise) in your animal drawings. You're still allowed to use the contour lines that define the connection between different forms (like form intersections), but I think removing this tool will help you learn to solve your problems differently.

• I do not want you to work on more than a single animal drawing in a given day. You are welcome to spend more than a day on a single drawing, but don't try and do more than one in a sitting. It's common for students to try and rush through drawing their marks and forms without thinking, but I want you to try your best to find places to invest your time. Apply the ghosting method to every single mark you draw, focus on making every single form feel three dimensional, spend LOTS of time constantly looking at your reference to inform every single form you draw and how you draw it (I suspect this is something you're forgetting to do quite a bit based on most of your other drawings, so don't forget about what's written here about observation. And of course, you will probably need to reread this critique a few times, as it is quite long and dense, at about 2000 words.