Hello Yahlunna, I'm sorry to hear that you injured your hand, I hope it is all healed up now.

This is a solid submission, and I'm seeing fair bit of growth across the set as things started to click for you.

Starting with your organic intersections, here you've done an excellent job of capturing how these forms slump and sag over one another under the influence of gravity. Your forms are simple and solid, and your piles feel stable and supported, like we could walk away from them and nothing would topple off. Just what we're aiming for, well done.

Your shadows are coming along well, you're projecting them boldly enough to cast onto the surfaces below, and I can see that you're really aware of how the curvature of these surfaces affects the shape of the shadows. Something to think about when you practice this exercise in future, is making sure all the shadows follow a consistent light source. On your first page the majority of the shadows are following a light source coming from the upper right, marked with blue, but there also seems to be a shadow following a light source from the lower right, which I've marked in red.

Moving on to your animal constructions here you've done a great job, I can see you're thinking of your constructions like 3d puzzles, and figuring out how all the various pieces you draw relate to one another in 3D space and connect together with specific relationships. You're doing really well at applying the lesson instructions, and the majority of the advice I have for you today isn't about any actual mistakes you've made, but bonus information that I hope will help you to get even more out of these constructional exercises in future.

You've made great strides in taking actions on your constructions in 3D. There is the occasional spot where you'd made a quick addition with a one-off line such as here on this deer, instead of complete forms, so just keep in mind that we want to do the latter, so that we can define how the new addition connects to the existing forms in 3D space.

Where in lesson 4 we introduced the idea of building onto our constructions with complete forms, here in lesson 5 we start to delve a bit more into how we design their silhouettes. I think overall you've done a pretty good job of specifically designing the silhouette of those masses to have them actually wrap around the existing structure. I always try and push students to think about their masses first as they exist on their own, in the void, as a ball of soft meat. Here they have no complexity, being made up only of outward curves with no corners to their silhouettes. Once they press up against an existing structure however, they start developing complexity, with inward curves to wrap around those existing forms as shown here. This essentially means that we need to always make sure that we understand the nature of both the additional mass, and all the forms it's pressing up against. We can't draw the silhouette to have complexity (inward curves) without a clear source of that complexity.

You're mostly holding to this quite well, and I can see improvement across the set. There are a couple of ways I think I can suggest some improvements, and we'll use one of your gnu constructions as an example.

Here I've drawn over parts of the masses along the back with separate colors to make it clear which mass I'm referring to. For all 3 masses you've done a good job of keeping them simple where they are exposed to fresh air, and it is good to see you using separate masses for each bump, rather than trying to achieve too much with a single mass.

The large mass marked A (which I'm guessing you drew first) maintains a fairly consistent trajectory as it passes over a number of different surfaces. It runs straight across the shoulder mass, almost as if this structure doesn't exist. In this image I've redrawn the mass, and the biggest change is where I've used the shoulder mass to press into the additional mass, wrapping the new form around the structure that is already in place. The more interlocked they are, the more spatial relationships we define between the masses, the more solid and grounded everything appears.

For the blue mass, marked as B, we have a case of the opposite. Where I'd marked with an asterisk you'd placed a sharp corner in the silhouette of the mass, but there's nothing present in the construction to cause such complexity. If we think of mass B wrapping around mass A here, we'd want a smoother transition across the smooth, rounded surface of mass A. We can include a corner where mass B transitions between wrapping around the neck, to wrapping around mass A, as there is a significant change in the underlying surfaces here.

Mass C wasn't far off, I've just been a bit more specific about making it clear that this mass is wrapping around A at the front there. You'd kept the front of the mass quite simple there, all one soft outward curve, which doesn't quite explain how the mass relates to the underlying structures.

Moving on, I'm happy to see that you've stuck with the sausage method for constructing your legs, and you've done a good job of keeping those sausage forms simple, and usually remembered to include the contour curve for the intersection at each joint, great work.

Something worth mentioning, is that you're off to a good start with using additional forms to build onto your leg sausage armatures to arrive at a more characteristic construction of the particular leg you're trying to draw. I noticed a lot of these additions focus primarily on masses 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 as puzzles.

Here I've also included an example of how this might apply to one of the legs on your gnu. The other point I wanted to make with this image, is that instead of pressing an inward curve into your additional masses where they are exposed to fresh air and there is nothing present to explain that complexity, try building the inward curve by layering masses together, letting each one stay simple where it is exposed to fresh air.

You've done a good job of constructing your feet with boxy forms, which helps them to feel solid. As a quick bonus, I think you may find it helpful to look at these notes on foot construction where Uncomfortable shows how we can push this idea further by also constructing boxy forms for the individual toes.

The next thing I wanted to talk about is head construction. If I recall your Discord posts, you're fully aware that the most up to date method of head construction that is generally most useful in terms of these drawings all being exercises in spatial reasoning is the informal head demo.

There are a few key points to this approach:

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

Looking through your constructions I can see that you've been applying some of these key points to your heads, carving out angular pentagonal eye sockets and trying to fit the various pieces of your head constructions tightly like a 3D puzzle. You're doing really well overall, but I made a couple of edits to your gnu while I had the image open. As noted here you're doing a good job carving out the specific pentagonal shape of the eye sockets, just try to get the base of your muzzle wedged snugly against a whole edge of the eye socket as I've shown here. In all fairness, this is something you did correctly on many of your constructions. The other point to note with this particular head is the construction of the forehead area is a little strange. I can see you were constructing your brow ridge/forehead area with a blocky form, but I'm not sure how the long line from the top of the forehead to the top of the nose connects to the rest of the head in 3D space. I think I'd probably break it into stages like this, keeping the forehead restricted to the top of the head and constructing a separate form for the bulge at the front of the face.

Finally, and this is just a small tip. I can see that you're being really mindful of designing individual tufts of hair when you're adding fur, which is great. I've done a rough little bit of digital editing to the beard of the gnu to show how this diagram I shared with you previously might apply in practice.

All right, I think that covers it. You've done a great job and I'll go ahead and mark this as complete.