It is best, when submitting work for critique, to avoid writing a lengthy preamble. If you have questions, try to work in bullet points as much as possible, so we can identify and tackle them quickly and efficiently. Aside from questions students explicitly present, we try to focus on what the homework itself conveys as much as possible. Self-assessment can be more of a contaminant than anything else, so we try to ignore it as best we can.

To your question, I'm glad to hear that this is something you're working through with a professional - there isn't much more that I can offer on this regard that you wouldn't be better off hearing from a therapist (or in the case of their disagreement, I'd certainly go with whatever they have to say, making my views on this matter moot). My view of the matter is that an individual student's expectations aren't really relevant. Yes, they'll fuel disappointment, and they'll distract us from what we're meant to be doing here, but it's the existence of those expectations which are the problem (or rather our tendency to give them such importance on the basis of them being our expectations). This course strives to remove that degree of agency from the student. They're given assigned tasks, and it is up to the one giving the feedback to decide on what is expected. A student is simply not equipped to really understand what they should or should not be striving for (beyond attempting to follow the instructions to the best of their ability - something that itself is fraught with the all too natural tendency to forget, to miss, and to simply not understand).

Those who struggle most with their expectations, at least from what I've seen, tend to come from certain backgrounds. Those with academic inclinations, and those who perceive themselves as being especially intelligent, for example. I also see it a lot from those who suffer from depressive tendencies - not only because of their tendency to be hard on themselves, but perhaps moreso because of a tendency to be convinced they understand how the world works (ie: I know how things truly are, and therefore I am confident in why I am worthless). These behaviours - again from what I've seen from my students - tend to cause such students to focus more on theorycraft, on min-maxing their education. They always look to squeeze just a little more out of the resources they're provided, as though they know there's a slew of hidden tips and tricks beyond the veil, and that in not reaching out for such, they are failing to meet their potential. They always need more than what is offered.

Of course, this may at least in part be something we can blame on standard academics, where that kind of thinking is rewarded (queue the classic stereotype of the eager student making use of a professor's office hours). In academics, grades matter, and they scar our permanent records (or at least they seem to). Thus if we wait for the test to show us what we have yet to learn, those mistakes will be eternally present in our history, and we will be judged for them.

That is not however how this course works, and thus the same tactics are not encouraged nor rewarded here. I honestly find them to be incredibly detrimental to one's mental health, and I hold standard academic strategies responsible for a lot of the difficulties people face when just trying to function.

On the flipside, the healthiest outlook I've come across is one that simply accepts the fact of their own ignorance. That they are not equipped to guide their own education at this point, that they're leaning on others to help define expectations and call out things that have been missed or misunderstood, and that they are going to make lots of mistakes along the way as par for the course. Truly accepting that is no easy thing, especially for the kind of people who insist on having a hand in the design of their own training (beyond picking a resource and following it), but if one is able to simply take things at face value, they find far fewer roadblocks in their path.

Now, as per my explanation above, I hope you'll understand why I will only be looking at the work that was assigned in my critique, as that is the way in which this course was designed to be completed and assessed. All I ask students to do is what is explicitly assigned - to do more always comes back to the student trying to min-max their training, and to try and find the secret unmentioned paths to getting more. I do indeed consider it grinding in the context of this course.

Starting with your organic forms with contour curves, these are largely coming along well - you're maintaining confident linework for the contour curves themselves, and are generally fairly successful in keeping them snug within the silhouette of each given form. One area of weakness that does stand out however is that you are still, to varying degrees, having some trouble in sticking to the characteristics of simple sausages. You're not so far off that it's a huge concern, but there are enough cases where a sausage has ends of different sizes, or where there's pinching through the midsection, that suggests that you may not be consciously aware of this particular aspect of the exercise. Focusing on those simple properties for each form helps us to capture the illusion of solidity for each one, which in turn is very valuable in using these sausages as one of the core building blocks of our constructions.

Moving onto your insect constructions, there are a number of points that stand out - some positive, and some which can be improved upon. To start, I can certainly see that you are trying to think about how these constructions exist in 3D space across a number of these (and I feel it is something that improves over the set itself), but there are definitely some aspects of your approach that could be adjusted to further improve each drawing's value as a spatial exercise.

The first point that jumped out at me is the tendency for your drawings to feature two distinct structures, which appear to occupy the same space, but seem to be fundamentally separate in the way they've been drawn. This distinction exists between those initial masses you start with (the head, thorax, abdominal masses) which are drawn either with a completely different pen, or simply with far less pressure, and all of the subsequent linework which is considerably thicker and bolder.

When students create this distinction between phases of their construction (treating the early masses as something separate or different from the rest of the construction), it can encourage one to view those initial masses as being less solid, and less present in the world. Constructional drawing itself is all about building up to a result, step by step - it's an exercise, a spatial puzzle that we solve, and in so doing we gradually rewire the way in which our brains perceive the 3D space that exists within the flat surface of the page. For the most part you clearly work well in that direction, but consistently across these drawings those first masses are treated as being separate, as not being a part of the final drawing.

Note in particular how with each of those early masses, if they were removed from the drawings, it would not have any impact on the end result's completeness. That is because you end up replacing them with darker, bolder lines, phasing them out of the construction altogether.

Long story short - always treat those additional masses as though they are establishing real, tangible, solid forms in the world, and as you move forwards, do not change your approach. Don't press harder, don't switch to a different pen, just introduce every next element as another solid, complete form, focusing on establishing how one wraps around the other in 3D space. You can see in this ant head demo for instance how that initial head mass is not replaced or removed after the fact - instead, it serves as a solid foundation upon which the other structures are attached. You can also see this throughout the lobster and shrimp demos on the informal demos page - each mass is established as being solid and three dimensional, and serve as the structure around which everything thereafter will wrap around or attach.

To that point, there are definitely areas in which you've done a pretty good job in establishing the manner in which one form wraps around another - specifically in areas of segmentation along abdomens like the armored bush cricket. Along your insects' legs, however, the approach you use for building up further structure along your legs could be improved.

What I'm seeing most often are these hotdog-bun type situations where you wrap the masses lengthwise around a given sausage segment (giving the impression of a sausage inside of a bun). Running lengthwise in this manner gives us a more limited opportunity to really "wrap" the new masses around the existing sausage. Instead, if we twist those new masses around the existing structure, as demonstrated here, we can focus much more on how the silhouette of the new mass interacts with the existing structure. Here we can actually design that silhouette, rather than just stamping down a flat shape on a flat drawing. This principle can be applied to all situations where we build upon an underlying structure to add more nuance and specificity to its structure, as shown here.

Specifically when we design those silhouettes, we think about the particular positioning of more complex elements (like corners and inward curves), and where we place simpler elements (like outward curves). As shown here, the complexity exists always in response to contact being made with existing structure, whereas everything else left without contact is drawn in as simple a form as possible.

In general, try to avoid entirely engulfing an existing structure in the new element you add. This can limit how much actual contact the new mass's silhouette has with the existing structure, and therefore defines a weaker relationship with it. Instead, we can break apart the new mass into separate pieces, defining each one's relationship individually, and ultimately yielding a stronger, more solid result.

Also, avoid having them run over long distances, as you've done with a lot of these legs. Try to keep your additional masses more limited in scope, having them individually accomplish a more focused, specific job. When things try to accomplish too much, they have a tendency to flatten out.

One last thing I wanted to call out is the heavy use of contour lines in some of your drawings. Back in Lesson 2, it made the most sense to introduce them with an exercise that employs a lot of them, but in truth the way we employ them in that exercise (where we pile them on top of the surface of a single form, almost creating parts of a wireframe) is quite excessive and unnecessary. As we pile those contour lines on, they suffer from diminishing returns - the first one may have a more notable impact in reinforcing how that form sits in 3D space, while the second may have far less of an impact, and the third even less so.

Understanding how to employ contour lines effectively comes down to ensuring that we're using the ghosting method's phases correctly - specifically, the planning phase. There we ask ourselves what exactly we wish to achieve with a given mark, how that mark can be executed to best accomplish that task, and ultimately whether another mark is already achieving that goal on its own. Asking ourselves these questions about whether a mark is really needed can help us to avoid putting down unnecessary linework that won't really serve much of a purpose other than cluttering things up. So - always be sure to go through the planning phase for any mark. Don't put marks down willy-nilly without really considering what they're for.

I should also mention that there are different kinds of contour lines. Those introduced in the organic forms exercise are one sort, but what is in fact more effective and useful are those we introduced in Lesson 2's form intersections exercise. These contour lines wrap around the surface of multiple forms simultaneously, defining their relationship in 3D space. They cannot really be overused (given that there's only one intersection between any two simple forms), and they also have considerable impact and value. When it comes to contour lines, look first and foremost for where those forms connect to one another, and be sure to define those intersections before resorting to the other kind of contour line.

Now, as a whole I do feel you're largely moving in the right direction. Most of the issues I raised (except for the very first one) are fairly standard. The first issue however is one I would like to see corrected, so I'm going to assign some fairly minimal revisions below.