Starting with your organic forms with contour curves, I can see that you are making a concerted effort to stick to the characteristics of simple sausages, as noted in the instructions. There is still room for improvement on that front, but it's mainly wth subtler things - like ensuring that the ends are circular in shape, and equal in size, and avoiding the tendency to make them more stretched out and ellipsoid. Also, keep in mind that the degree of those contour curves, as they move farther away from the viewer, should be getting wider as explained in the Lesson 1 ellipses video.

Continuing onto your insect constructions, I can clearly see that you're paying a lot of attention to the idea of building up from simple to complex, in successive stages, rather than jumping straight into higher levels of complexity from the get-go. This is definitely resulting in some constructions that come out quite strongly - this one stands out in this regard - although I do believe there is some additional advice I can offer that will help you better formulate how to think about what we're doing with these constructions, and ultimately maximize what you get out of these exercises.

It all comes down to distinguishing between the actions we take in 2D space - putting down lines or flat shapes on a page, and generally engaging with the drawing with all the freedom that comes with working in two dimensions - versus the actions we take in 3D space, where we're actively thinking of every new addition we introduce as a complete form, and drawing them in such a way that they respect and reinforce the 3D nature of what's already there in the scene.

Because we're drawing on a flat piece of paper, we have a lot of freedom to make whatever marks we choose - it just so happens that the majority of those marks will 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 connection to that form is entirely based on its current shape. If you change that shape, you won't alter the form 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.

Take a look at this drawing. I tried to find one that featured both cuts into the silhouette (in red), and extensions of the silhouettes of existing forms, or additions of partial shapes, in blue. Ultimately they are both the same problem - modifications made in 3D space - although the cuts in red tend to have far greater impact to flatten out our constructions.

Instead of putting down one-off lines or enclosing partial shapes against the existing silhouettes of our forms, whenever we want to build upon our construction or change something, we can do so by introducing new 3D forms to the structure - forms with their own fully self-enclosed silhouettes - and by establishing how those forms either connect or relate to what's already present in our 3D scene. We 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 accepting that everything we draw is 3D, and therefore needs to be treated as such in order for 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 I've been pushing this concept more recently, it hasn't been fully integrated into 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.

Continuing on, I noticed that you seem to have employed a lot of different strategies for capturing the legs of your insects. 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 actually 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 a base structure or armature that captures both the solidity and the gestural flow of a 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 here, here, in this ant leg, and even here in the context of a dog's leg (because this technique is still to be used throughout the next lesson as well). Just make sure you start out with the sausages, precisely as the steps are laid out in that diagram.

All that said, I can see a ton of improvement over the set, and comparing things like this early weevil (which I think was coming along okay, but suffered from less time being invested in the observation of your references), to this construction I'd referenced earlier, the difference is noticeable. That said, improvement is often a bit of a dance - you take some steps forwards, and then a couple steps back, it all varies from case to case and we may make a lot more correct decisions, and generally use our time more wisely in one drawing, only to tackle another and rush through it, or just be overwhelmed by the complexity involved. All of this is pretty normal, so cases like this praying mantis not coming out quite as well is pretty understandable, given its complexity.

Ultimately, construction is all about taking big, complicated problems and tackling them in bite-sized chunks. So in situations like this, take a step back, reflect on what you know, and try not to allow the complexity of the problem overwhelm you.

As a whole you're good to move forward, so I'm going to mark this lesson as complete - just be sure to review this feedback periodically as you move forwards, to ensure that the points I've raised here are continually being addressed as you move into the next one.