Starting with your organic forms with contour lines, these are generally pretty well done, but you do need to be a little more mindful of the importance of sticking to the characteristics of simple sausage forms. You've got some that pinch through their midsection, and others that have ends of different sizes, or an end that gets more stretched out instead of remaining properly circular.
Moving onto your insect constructions, overall I think you've improved a fair bit over this set and have largely done pretty well, though there are a few things I want to point out.
First and foremost, it appears that you've only partially employed the sausage technique when constructing your insects' legs. You're missing the important step of reinforcing the joint between sausage segments with a contour line, as shown in the center of this diagram. This is an incredibly important step (as are all the steps of the process), as it establishes a clear relationship between the forms in space, which makes both feel solid and three dimensional.
Now, there are some drawings where more time could have been put into the sausage shapes themselves, and how they were laid out. For example, with this spider you deviated a fair bit from simple sausage shapes, and the way they were drawn appeared rather stiff compared to the fluid sausages shown in the diagram.
Another point that will definitely help as you move forwards is to more clearly establish the insects' relationship with the ground. Right now they're all floating arbitrarily in space. Placing the outline of a cast shadow shape on the ground beneath them can help a great deal to help make the drawing feel more real and tangible (for better or for worse). You can see this technique used in a number of the demonstrations available in the lesson.
Returning to the legs, looking at the little feet you add at the ends of drawings like this last one, you're breaking away from one of the core principles of construction. That is, to start simple, and build up greater complexity through the addition of more simple forms. Here the feet have been drawn with complex shapes in one go, and as a result they all appear quite flat.
Now, over the course of the whole set, you have demonstrated a number of drawings that show a well developing grasp of how the object as a whole sits in 3D space. Pretty consistently the legs appear flat, but the way they're arranged in drawings such as this one, the dragon fly here, and to a lesser degree this ant, sells the impression that the drawing as a whole exists in 3D space.
While there are areas you can definitely improve upon (specifically the legs), there will be ample opportunity to do so in the next lesson - specifically because the same technique will be used to construct a base structure for your animals' legs, before adding additional forms as shown here and here and here.
As such, I will go ahead and mark this lesson as complete.
Next Steps:
Move onto lesson 5.
Thank you so much for the feedback! You are right that I struggled with the 'sausage shape' on the insect legs, and I am having a hard time thinking of them as 3D shapes.
Can you elaborate on the issues with the peacock spider legs? Embarrisingly enough, I thought I was doing better on that drawing than the other ones, so I think I'm misunderstanding something.
With the peacock spider, there are two main issues:
Firstly, the segments appear to be more like stretched ellipses rather than sausages. In this case it's a bit close, but the way they're drawn has ends that aren't quite circular, and there's a subtle tendency to widen (even just slightly) right to the midpoint of the form. The sausages only get wider/narrower at their ends, and otherwise remain consistent in their width throughout their length). You can see the comparison made in the bottom left corner of the diagram.
Secondly, you weren't reinforcing the joints between the sausages with a contour line, as shown in the middle of the diagram linked above. It's an incredibly important step (which I believe I drew attention to in my original critique).
I hope that clarifies the issues.
That does help, thank you! I'll practice making the leg segments more consistent throughout, and will pay attention to drawing the joint contour lines.
These are what I use when doing these exercises. They usually run somewhere in the middle of the price/quality range, and are often sold in sets of different line weights - remember that for the Drawabox lessons, we only really use the 0.5s, so try and find sets that sell only one size.
Alternatively, if at all possible, going to an art supply store and buying the pens in person is often better because they'll generally sell them individually and allow you to test them out before you buy (to weed out any duds).
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