Hello Lu_draws_something, I'll be the teaching assistant handling your lesson 4 critique.

Starting with your organic forms you've done a pretty good job of sticking to the characteristics of simple sausages that are introduced here.

Keep in mind that the degree of your contour lines should be shifting wider as we slide along the sausage form, moving farther away from the viewer. This is also influenced by the way in which the sausages themselves turn in space, but farther = wider is a good rule of thumb to follow. If you're unsure as to why that is, review the Lesson 1 ellipses video. You can also see a good example of how to vary your contour curves in this diagram showing the different ways in which our contour lines can change the way in which the sausage is perceived.

When adding the little ellipses to the end(s) of your forms remember to draw around them two full times before lifting your pen off the page, even if you feel like you can nail them in a single pass. This is something we ask students to do for every ellipse you freehand in this course, as introduced here in lesson 1.

Moving on to your insect constructions these are generally coming along well as you're sticking to the principles of starting simple and building complexity piece by piece. I can see a developing understanding of how the forms you draw exist in 3D space, but I do have some advice to offer that should help you to develop your skills further.

As discussed here on the lesson intro page it is critically important to start each construction with simple solid forms. You've done this well in the first half of your pages, but once you get to constructions where you intend to add texture and detail your approach appears to change, and we get pages like this and this where the body gets cut off as it passes behind the head. When working on these constructional exercises you need to "draw through" your forms, and complete them, even where they pass behind something else. Doing so will force you into thinking about how the entire form exists in 3D space, not simply about the 2D shape of the visible sections on the paper.

This brings me to the next point, which relates to differentiating between the actions we can take when interacting with a construction, which fall into two groups:

1 Actions in 2D space, where we're just putting lines down on a page, without necessarily considering the specific nature of the relationships between the forms they're meant to represent and the forms that already exist in the scene.

2 Actions in 3D space, where we're actually thinking about how each form we draw exists in 3D space, and how it relates to the existing 3D structures already present. We draw them in a manner that actually respects the 3D nature of what's already there, and even reinforces it.

Because we're drawing on a flat piece of paper, we have a lot of freedom to make whatever marks we choose, but many of those marks would 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.

Fortunately you don't cut back inside forms you have already drawn very much at all. The only places I'm seeing this are probably accidental, and occur where there is a gap between passes of an ellipse. In places like this where you'd chosen the inner line of your ellipse as the basis for the construction, it leaves a stray line outside the construction to remind the viewer that they are looking at lines on a flat piece of paper and undermines the 3D illusion somewhat.

It is perfectly normal for there to be some looseness to your ellipses, after all, we insist on students prioritising a smooth confident stroke over accuracy, and ask you to draw around them 2 full times. There is a way we can work with a loose ellipse and still build a solid construction. Treat the outermost perimeter as though it is the silhouette's edge - doesn't matter if that particular line tucks back in and another one goes on to define that outermost perimeter - as long as we treat that outer perimeter as the silhouette's edge, all of the loose additional lines remain contained within the silhouette rather than existing as stray lines to undermine the 3D illusion. This diagram shows which lines to use on a loose ellipse.

Although you don't cut back inside the silhouette of forms you have already drawn very much, you are a little prone to doing the opposite, and extending off existing forms using partial, flat shapes, not quite providing enough information for us to understand how these new additions actually connect to the existing structure in 3D space. I've marked some examples in blue on this spider and this ant.

Instead, when we want to build on our construction or alter something we add new 3D forms to the existing structure. Forms with their own complete 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 understanding that everything we draw is 3D, and therefore needs to be treated as such in order for both you and 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 Uncomfortable has 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.

The next thing I wanted to talk about is leg construction. It looks like you had the sausage method in mind for most of these constructions, although you have a tendency to draw some of the sections of your legs as partial shapes rather than complete sausage forms. 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 in these examples here, here, and in this ant leg demo and also here on this dog leg demo as this method should be used throughout lesson 5 too.

I know I already told you to draw around your ellipses on the ends of your organic forms, but this point also applies to your insect constructions.You're doing a good job of drawing these smoothly, with confidence, but frequently stop short of to full circuits.

Your mark making is generally very good, but I did circle in red a couple of spots on this page where there is room for improvement. On the underside of the abdomen was a section that got a little sketchy. Leaving gaps between lines that are supposed to connect together makes your construction vague, and forces the viewer into deciding where they think the edge of the construction is, which ultimately reminds them that they're looking at lines on a flat piece of paper. On the wing I circled a spot where the line is starting to get a little bit scratchy. As introduced here we're aiming for marks that are continuous and unbroken throughout the course.

In a similar vein, the leaves included on this page are rather sloppy when compared to your efforts in lesson 3. You've left an arbitrary gap between the flow line and the tip of the leaf as well as zigzagging edge detail. You didn't need to draw the leaves, so it is not a huge deal, but do make sure that you take the time to draw each line to the best of your current ability when working on these exercises, no matter how small or insignificant they may seem.

Finally a few words on texture and detail. I saw your note about having trouble with shadows. I'm guessing you mean the shadow cast by the insect onto the ground plane. This is entirely normal, and I'm glad you had a go and tried it out, rather than avoiding doing them. The cast shadow on this page is fairly well done, you're clearly thinking of all the forms present and how they would project a shadow onto the ground below. Try not to leave gaps in the shadow shape as seen on this page as we end up with a series of disconnected lines rather than a coherent shape.

I can see you pushing yourself towards applying some of the instructions for texture that are introduced in lesson 2 although there are a few pointers I can offer that should help to steer you in the right direction.

• We do not use hatching to transition between light and dark as seen here as this is form shading which we don't need to apply in this course.

• Areas of solid black should be reserved for cast shadows. There are some pages like this one where you appear to be filling in form shadows. If you're unsure what the difference is I suggest you re-watch this video.

• If we look at this fly, we can see that you're starting to implicitly describe small textural forms on the body using cast shadows, good work. The detail on the wings still looks rather explicit though. I'd suggest you reread your lesson 3 critique where ThatOneMushroomGuy provided an explanation on how to tackle texture in this course. The approach we use isn't easy, but it is useful for what it teaches us in terms of thinking in 3D space, rather than copying 2D information from the reference.

Conclusion

I think you've understood what this lesson aims to teach you, and even with the hiccups of not drawing through some of your major forms on a couple of pages I think your underlying spatialreasoning skills are coming along well. I've called out a few things to work on, but they can all continue to be addressed into the next lesson, so I'll go ahead and mark this one as complete. Just be sure to actively tackle these points as you handle your animals. It's not uncommon for students to acknowledge these points here, but forget about them once they move on, resulting in me having to repeat it in the next critique (which we certainly want to avoid).