Hello Mozzalexis, I'll be the teaching assistant handling your lesson 5 critique.

Starting with your organic intersections, they're very well done. You're developing a strong impression of how these forms interact with one another in three dimensions, not just as shapes on a flat page.

You're doing a good job of projecting your shadows boldly enough to cast onto the forms below, and they're following a consistent light source. If I had to pick something to nit-pick, I'd say keep in mind that the shadow shape is a projection of the silhouette of the form casting it. That shape will distort, depending on the angle and curvature of the surfaces it is being cast onto, but will still have a clear relationship to the form casting it. You're doing very well already, I just noticed a couple of spots where the shadows appeared narrower and pointier than the forms casting them. I've made a small alteration to one of your shadows here to show what I mean.

Moving on to your animal constructions you're doing a very good job overall. There are a couple of areas where I have a bit of advice, but on the whole you're demonstrating pretty strong spatial reasoning skills, building your constructions from solid forms, and establishing how they connect together in 3D space in a way that feels believable and helps to support the illusion that we're looking through a window into a three dimensional world, rather than lines on a flat piece of paper.

I'm honestly really pleased to see that you've continued to make effective use of the sausage method of leg construction throughout the set, and for the most part you're tackling your feet constructions with solid forms too. I say for the most part, as occasionally you'll add in a single line or partial shape, as highlighted in blue on this warthog, just remember to keep building with complete 3d forms, even for smaller elements.

When it comes to how you're building onto your basic constructions, I'm happy to that see you've experimented a great deal with additional masses, and there some areas where you're especially thoughtful about how masses wrap around the existing structures. It can be difficult sometimes to know where to keep masses simple and rounded, and where to include complexity like sharp corners and inward curves.

One thing that helps with the shape here is to think about how the mass would behave when existing first in the void of empty space, on its own. It all comes down to the silhouette of the mass - here, with nothing else to touch it, our mass would exist like a soft ball of meat or clay, made up only of outward curves. A simple circle for a silhouette.

Then, as it presses against an existing structure, the silhouette starts to get more complex. It forms inward curves wherever it makes contact, responding directly to the forms that are present. The silhouette is never random, of course - always changing in response to clear, defined structure. You can see this demonstrated in this diagram.

I noticed on some of your constructions, for example on this horse's rump, where you'd avoided using much complexity in the highlighted masses, using predominantly soft, outward curves for their whole silhouette. Unfortunately this lack of complexity robs us of the tools we need to use to establish contact between these 3D structures, instead making the masses appear flatter and more blobby. So, as shown in this diagram we can make use of specific sharper corners and inward curves to explain how the additional mass grips the underlying structures. In the case of your horse rump, this gets a little trickier with the mass I'd marked in purple, as it exists wholly within the animal's silhouette- this is great, as it means you're thinking about the "in between" pieces that don't directly impact the silhouette of the construction, but still exist in 3D space and could be used 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 how I might apply this to your horse. Redesigning the red masses to wrap around the rump there, and including the purple one fitting in between them all. 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 further push the value of these constructional exercises as puzzles.

Complexity in additional masses shouldn't be arbitrary, but should occur due to the mass interacting with existing structures in the construction. I think you're on the right track here, and I have just a few more edits to show you on your other horse. Starting with the mass above the shoulder, here we had an arbitrary inward curve where the mass attached to the torso sausage, I've pulled the mass down around the side of the body a little more, so that the same inward curve now occurs as a result of the additional mass being pressed against the top of the shoulder mass. The more interlocked they are, the more spatial relationships we define between the masses, the more solid and grounded everything appears. I've used the same idea to press the mass on top of the rump against the thigh (although there was nothing incorrect with your mass as it was). For the mass at the back of the hind leg I've moved a sharp corner that was positioned arbitrarily on the middle of the thigh over to the edge of the thigh.

This next point is pretty straight forward - ease up on the additional contour lines, you tend to throw them onto additional masses when they're not necessarily needed, and I've often found that when students do that, they're less likely to give as much thought to how they're designing those additional masses, because they feel like they can "fix" mistakes by adding contour lines. Unfortunately, those contour lines (the ones that sit on the surface of a single form, as opposed to those that define the intersection between forms) only make a structure feel more three dimensional in isolation. They don't actually help define the relationships between forms in space, which is far more effective in making the whole construction feel solid and believable.

When you do use contour lines, really ask yourself what you're trying to accomplish with them, how they can best achieve that goal, and whether another mark or tool is already accomplishing that task.

The last thing I wanted to talk about is head construction. Lesson 5 has a lot of different strategies for constructing heads, between the various demos. Given how the course has developed, and how Uncomfortable is finding new, more effective ways for students to tackle certain problems. So not all the approaches shown are equal, but they do have their uses. As it stands, as explained at the top of the tiger demo page (here), the current approach that is the most generally useful, as well as the most meaningful in terms of these drawings all being exercises in spatial reasoning, is what you'll find here in this 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 across your set, it looks like you're aware of this method, as I can see you applying some of these key elements in many of your pages. Please stick with this method when doing constructional drawing exercises using animals in the future, as closely as you can. Sometimes it seems like it's not a good fit for certain heads, but as shown in in this rhino head demo it can be adapted for a wide array of animals. A minor point that can help with eye lids is to to actually draw each eyelid as its own separate additional mass, wrapping them around the eyeball as shown here.

Okay, I think that should cover it. As I said, you're doing really well, so I'll go ahead and mark this as complete. Please keep up the good work.