Hello SadieLady, congrats on completing your buggies!

Starting with your sausage forms you’re doing pretty well at keeping your linework smooth and confident, and it is clear that you’re aiming to stick to the characteristics of simple sausages that are introduced here, with some of your forms being very successful.

With regards to your contour curves, I can see that you’re striving to fit them snugly against the sides of the form and hooking them around so their curvature accelerates as they approach the edge, which is great. Keep pushing to align each curve so that they are perpendicular to the length of the form, using the central flow line as their minor axis. While this isn’t easy and we do expect to see the odd one that is a little off, when there are 3 in a row that are misaligned, (as I’ve called out on the upper right of this page) it does suggest you could be more consciously aware of this requirement. Remember to rotate your page to find the easiest angle to draw each curve, as part of the planning phase of the ghosting method.

When deciding which end(s) of a form to add contour ellipses to, remember that these ellipses are no different from the contour curves, in that they're all just contour lines running along the surface of the form. It's just that when the tip faces the viewer, we can see all the way around the surface, resulting in a full ellipse rather than just a partial curve. But where the end is pointing away from us, there would be no ellipse at all. Take a look at this breakdown of the different ways in which our contour lines can change the way in which the sausage is perceived - note how the contour curves and the ellipses are always consistent, giving the same impression of which ends are facing towards the viewer and which are facing away.

Moving on to your insect constructions there's a great deal here that you're doing quite well. I'm very pleased to see your overall focus on building up from simple to complex, although I think this can be pushed further by highlighting the distinction between the kinds of choices we can make - those in 2D space, where we're just thinking about making marks on a flat page, and those choices we make in 3D space where we're actually thinking about what we add as being three dimensional forms, and drawing them such that they both respect and reinforce the solid nature of the existing structures.

Because we're drawing on a flat piece of paper, we have a lot of freedom to make whatever marks we choose, but many of those marks would contradict the illusion you're trying to create and remind the viewer that they're just looking at a series of lines on a flat piece of paper. In order to avoid this and stick only to the marks that reinforce the illusion we're creating, we can force ourselves to adhere to certain rules as we build up our constructions. Rules that respect the solidity of our construction.

For example- once you've put a form down on the page, do not attempt to alter its silhouette. Its silhouette is just a shape on the page which represents the form we're drawing, but its its connection to that form is entirely based on its current shape. If you change that shape, you won't alter the form that it represents- you'll just break the connection, leaving yourself with a flat shape. We can see this most easily in this example of what happens when we cut back into the silhouette of a form.

Fortunately you don’t appear to cut back inside the silhouettes of forms you have already drawn very often, although I have highlighted one example here on your louse with red hatching where it looks like you cut back inside the ball form you had established for the thorax.

While cutting back into a silhouette is the easiest way to depict the issues with modifying a form after it's been drawn, there are other ways in which we can fall into this trap. On your beetle I also marked in blue some places where you'd extended off existing forms using partial, flat shapes, not quite providing enough information for us to understand how they actually connect to the existing structure in 3D space. While this approach worked fine for adding edge detail to leaves in the previous lesson, this is because leaves are paper-thin structures, so essentially they are already flat and altering their silhouette won’t flatten them further. When we want to build on forms that aren’t already flat we need to use another strategy.

Instead, when we want to build on our constructions or alter something we add new 3D forms to the existing structure. Forms with their own complete silhouettes- and by establishing how those forms either connect or relate to what's already present in our 3D scene. W can do this either by defining the intersection between them with contour lines (like in lesson 2's form intersections exercise), or by wrapping the silhouette of the new form around the existing structure as shown here.

This is all part of understanding that everything we draw is 3D, and therefore needs to be treated as such in order for both you and the viewer to believe in that lie.

You can see this in practice in this beetle horn demo, as well as in this ant head demo. You can also see some good examples of this in the lobster and shrimp demos on the informal demos page. As Uncomfortable has been pushing this concept more recently, it hasn't been fully integrated with the lesson material yet (it will be when the overhaul reaches lesson 4). Until then, those submitting for official critiques basically get a preview of what is to come.

The next thing I wanted to talk about is leg construction. It looks like you were aiming to use the sausage method for most (but not all) of your leg constructions, although actually sticking to the characteristics of simple sausages does appear to be quite challenging for you at the moment. That’s not at all unusual, and at this stage it isn’t too concerning as your consistency will improve with practice as long as you’re actively aiming to stick to sausage forms (like from the sausage forms with contours exercise) and giving yourself enough time to ghost each one, and engaging your shoulder so they don’t get stiff and wobbly.

It's not uncommon for students to be aware of the sausage method as introduced here, but to decide that the legs they're looking at don't seem to look like a chain of sausages, so they use some other strategy.

The key to keep in mind here is that the sausage method is not about capturing the legs precisely as they are- it is about laying in the base structure or armature that captures that captures both the solidity and gestural flow of the limb in equal measure, where the majority of other techniques lean too far to one side, either looking solid and stiff or gestural but flat. Once in place, we can then build on top of this base structure with more additional forms as shown in these examples here, and here. This tactic can be used extensively to build up the specific complexity of each particular leg, as shown in this ant leg demo. I'll also share this dog leg demo as an example of how to apply the sausage method to animal legs because the sausage method should be used throughout lesson 5.

Keep in mind that everything we add to these constructions serves a specific purpose, and additional line weight is no exception. As explained in this video from lesson 1 we reserve line weight for clarifying overlaps between forms, restricting it to localised areas where those overlaps occur. Line weight should also be subtle and adhere to the principles of markmaking, being applied with a single confident superimposed stroke.

When additional line weight is applied more liberally it tends to take your initially smooth confident lines and make them wobbly or scratchy, which adds unwanted complexity to your forms and makes them appear less solid.

When adding texture to constructions, because we happen to have a black pen in our hand, it can be tempting to fill in anything that happens to look black on the reference, as we see on this page. Instead, try to follow the guidance from the texture section of lesson 2, which is the most up to date, as well as the most useful in terms of these drawings all being exercises to develop spatial reasoning skills. In particular, following the steps in these reminders will help ensure that you’re thinking through your textures in three dimensions, rather than relying on copying from direct observation.

Allrighty, I think that should cover it. Your constructions are progressing well, and while I’ve outlined a few points that have room for improvement, these are all things you can continue to address into the next lesson, so I’ll go ahead and mark this one as complete.