I'll be the TA handling your Lesson 2 critique.

You're making progress towards understanding the concepts introduced in this lesson and hopefully this critique will help you in your future attempts.

• Starting off in the arrows section your lines are looking smoothly and confidently drawn. There are spots where your arrows bulge/narrow suddenly, this is an issue because it gives the impression that your arrows are stretching which hurts their solidity. Remember that as our arrows move closer to the viewer we want them to widen consistently. This is a good exercise to experiment with line weight but when applying it we want to make sure we do subtly to key areas like overlaps to give clarity to our forms. Here are some things to look out for when applying line weight, and here are some reminders on how to apply it subtly. I'd like you to experiment more with foreshortening in your future attempts, by utilizing it in both the arrows themselves as well as the negative space between their curves we can create a stronger illusion of an object moving through 3D space as demonstrated here.

• Moving into the organic forms with contours exercise your forms are getting a bit too complex. We want to create our forms with both ends being the same size and to avoid any pinching, bloating, or stretching along the form's length as discussed here. Some of your line work here shows a lack of confidence, remember that our first priority is that we want all of our linework/ellipses/contours to be drawn confidently and mileage will improve our accuracy. Speaking of contours I'd like you to try and shift the degree of your contours more. The degree of a contour line basically represents the orientation of that cross-section in space, relative to the viewer, and as we slide along the sausage form, the cross section is either going to open up (allowing us to see more of it) or turn away from the viewer (allowing us to see less), as shown here.

• In the texture exercises you're focusing largely on outlines and negative space rather than cast shadows created by forms along the texture itself. This makes it difficult to create gradients with implied information which we could then use to create focal points in more complex pieces, by doing so we can prevent our viewers from being visually overwhelmed with too much detail. You also show that you're drawing from memory at times rather than giving yourself enough time to focus on your reference. Most of our time when doing exercises like this will be spent observing our reference and looking away for a quick second to add something to our page. For more on the importance of focusing on cast shadows read here. I'd also like to quickly direct you to this image which shows that when we're working with thin line like textures if we outline and fill the shadow we will create a much more dynamic texture than simply drawing lines.

• It's quite common for people to feel like they don't fully grasp the form intersections exercise, if you feel like you may fall into this category try not to stress too much. This exercise is just meant to get students to start thinking about how their forms relate to one another in 3D space, and how to define those relationships on the page. We'll be going over them more in the upcoming lessons. Your forms here appear a bit hastily done, it looks like you needed more time planning them before drawing them. Remember that whether our goal is to draw 1 form or 100, we want to be giving each line the same amount of time planning/ghosting before drawing it. Your forms believably appear to belong in the same cohesive 3D space, good work.

• While wrapping up your submission with the organic intersections exercise you do a great job demonstrating that your sense of 3D space is developing as your forms begin to wrap around each other believably. You're keeping your forms simple and easy to work with which is a good strategy to help produce good results. I'd like you to draw through all of your forms in the future, it will help you develop a better understanding of the 3D space you're attempting to construct. When it comes to your shadows you're pushing them enough so that they cast rather than just hugging the form that creates them which is a great start. Your shadows appear to be following a consistent light source, be sure to experiment with different angles and intensities when trying this exercise again in the future. I recommend pushing your light source to the top left or right corner of the page to start with, it's easier than working with a light directly above your form pile.

While you do demonstrated some rust from being away from the material for year, you do improve towards the end. I'll be moving you on to the next lesson with the hope you'll revisit the previous lesson material just to refresh yourself on it. Don't need to redo the entire lessons or box challenge, but doing a page of each exercise would probably be beneficial.

Also while amusing at times you should probably leave your doodling to your 50% rule personal drawing time, doing it on your work will pull your focus away from the concepts you're working on.

Anyways keep practicing previous exercises as warm ups and good luck in lesson 3!