Starting with the organic forms with contour curves, they're certainly moving in the right direction, but there are a couple things you need to be more mindful of:

• First and foremost, stick to the characteristics of simple sausages. While I do suspect you are trying to keep things generally simple and avoid overly complex situations, the characteristics noted in the instructions are very specific. We want to stick to two circular ends of equal size, connected by a tube whose width remains consistent throughout its length. So, avoid having one end bigger than the other, swelling through the midsection, or the ends being stretched out.

• For the contour lines themselves, keep an eye on their degrees - they should be getting wider as you slide away from the viewer, rather than remaining the same. The reasoning for this is mentioned in a few exercises prior to this lesson, but the most concise explanation can be found in the lesson 1 ellipses video.

Continuing onto your insect constructions, you're actually doing a lot of good stuff here, with a few issues that I want to call out. Most meaningfully, I can see that you're paying a lot of attention to how every new element you add to a construction represents a solid, three dimensional form that is being added to the exsting structure. You don't appear to be taking any shortcuts like cutting back into the silhouettes of existing forms to "refine" or alter them, and so there's a lot more solidity o your results.

The first issue that jumps out to me is simply the vast overuse of contour lines, which suggests that you may simply not be thinking as much before the execution of each mark, in terms of what that mark is meant to contribute to the drawing. The kind of contour lines we have that sit along the length of a single form (like in the organic forms with contour lines exercise) are very useful, but they very quickly run into diminishing returns. Meaning, the first you add may have a big impact, but the second will have somewhat less so, and the third even less - eventually resulting in your next contour line having no useful impact on your construction.

Remember that the ghosting method itself, which should be used for every mark we draw, focuses heavily on the idea of planning being where a lot of your time is invested. That means figuring out what mark you mean to draw, why you mean to draw it, how it's meant to help you further your construction and your understanding of the forms as they exist in space, and finally how you can draw it to best accomplish that goal. If you don't go through that process for your marks, it becomes very easy to slip back into a lot of unnecessary linework.

We can also consider the fact that some contour lines are more valuable and effective than others. In lesson 2's form intersection exercise, we are introduced to another specific kind of contour line - one that defines the relationship between two separate forms. These are extremely effective, and by their very nature they cannot be overused, simply because there's only one intersection that can be defined between two forms based on how they actually relate to one another. Once it's drawn, you can't go and add another.

That's actually the kind of contour line we stress in the sausage method (as shown in the middle of the diagram), and you'll note that we specifically mention that the other kind should be left out. So for example, the contour lines you placed on the midsections of the segments of this fly's legs shouldn't have been there.

Cases like this are definitely instances where you drifted away from the sausage method to varying degrees. Sometimes you'd slip away from the use of simple sausage forms, sometimes you'd change how you use those contour lines, etc. Compared to most students, I'd say you still stayed closer to the sausage method, and showed that you were trying to maximize its use in certain cases. To this point, I can see that you do understand the idea that the sausages are meant to establish a base structure or armature, upon which we can build up further forms to add bulk and complexity where necessary.

I'm very pleased to see that - though I do have suggestions on how one can build upon those structures more effectively. If you take a look at this diagram, you'll see that rather than engulfing a sausage segment in another form, it's better to break it into smaller pieces that are attached one at a time. The reason for this is that it yields more overall contact between the new silhouette and the existing form's surface. That contact allows us to define more clearly how those forms relate to one another in space, which in turn makes it easier for the viewer (and for the student) to understand how they all build up together in three dimensions. Conversely, if we just engulf the whole sausage in a ball form, we have a couple very minimal points of contact, leaving us with less information on how they're actually interacting with one another. Here's another example of how this idea can be used in other cases not limited to the sausage method.

This kind of "wrapping" of individual pieces can more easily replicate the way in which muscles and other components of a creature's legs would build up in a natural way, as you can see in this ant leg demo as well as in this dog leg demo (since this concept continues to be very relevant through into the next lesson.

To that point, I noticed that you did try to experiment with this approach (specifically on this construction). It's great to see, and while it's not perfect, it's a big step in the right direction. The main thing to consider here is the way in which those forms' silhouettes are actually designed. Right now you're placing things like corners, or inward and outward curves in very arbitrary locations. Instead, it's best to think in terms of how each bit of complexity exists in response to this soft ball of meat being pushed into the existing structure. [You can see this in action here](), though it's the sort of thing that will benefit from more practice with the technique. We'll be able to talk about it more in the context of the next lesson.

So! all in all, you're moving in the right direction, so I'm going to go ahead and mark this lesson as complete.