8:21 PM, Wednesday March 9th 2022
Starting with your organic forms with contour curves, these are progressing fairly well. The sausage forms themselves are fairly close to the characteristics of simple sausages, although there are definitely some cases where you end up drifting farther away from those specific characteristics. I suspect that cases like this one (where one end is way bigger than the other), and this one where the bend is really dramatic occur because you've drawn your big masses, and now you're left trying to fill in the empty spaces in order to ensure a "filled" page. It's possible that in these smaller spaces you're more likely to draw from your elbow instead of your shoulder - so make sure that when you're drawing these smaller ones, that you're still thinking about everything you need to be prioritizing.
Additionally, your contour curves are coming along as well, although they are a little more visibly hesitant/stiff than the sausage marks. This again may be due to drawing from your elbow instead of the shoulder, though I can't really say - you could just be more hesitant. The solution for that is the same as usual - make sure you're using the ghosting method (which focuses on that execution phase being as confident as possible, regardless of any fears or worries you may have - which is very much a mind-over-matter thing), and of course being sure to draw with your whole arm from the shoulder, which functions like a stabilizer in digital software, making it impossible for you to make sudden or jerky movements.
Continuing onto your sausage chains, the first thing I noticed was that you very frequently create shorter sausages with really dramatic bends in them. Sometimes you're able to do this while sticking fairly close to the characteristics of simple sausages, but in general it does tend to result in you deviating further from those characteristics, with more pinching through the midsection. As I've marked out here, try to avoid the sort of "bean" shape where they're shorter and more dramatically curved through their midsections - insect and animal legs in general tend to be much longer and smoother. They do have some slight curving to them, but it's a much gentler curve, like a subtle sense of motion back and forth, rather than quicker zigzagging.
I suspect this is one of the bigger issues that you're running into when drawing your insects. You tend to draw your sausages shorter and with sharper curves, and when the insects' legs require longer sausages, you often end up drawing the whole sausage bigger (like scaling it up), resulting in a much thicker sausage than is required. So for example, in this construction I've drawn on top with much more reasonably sized sausages - note how they're all slender, and there isn't much in the way of curve to them. There's a little bit of arcing, but it's subtle and gentle, just like smoothly running water.
Now, to that point, I did notice that if we look at your pages of sausages, and then the pages of smaller sausages, they're not actually all that different in size (as shown here. As smaller sausages are definitely something you're struggling with, you will likely find yourself avoiding it - it is for this reason that you'll need to pay closer attention to exactly what it is you're doing, and more directly enforce your own will over the actions you take.
Before we continue from here, I want you to try and work on those smaller sausages. I'll assign some more revisions below.
Next Steps:
Please submit:
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3 pages of sausage chains that specifically focus on being narrower/skinnier, and longer, with far less in terms of that sharp/tight curving/bending.
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3 more insect constructions, keeping an eye on the size/thickness of your sausage structures.
