Starting with your organic intersections, I can see that you're working through the mechanics of how these forms would slump and sag against one another under the force of gravity, though from what I can see here, it looks more like you're engaging in individual experiments testing the interaction between a couple or a few sausages. The exercise instructions have us putting together a single cohesive pile however. There is definitely value in doing these little one-off experiments on your own to help sort through the spatial relationships as one form sags over the other - but when doing the assigned exercises, be sure to follow the instructions to the letter.

Moving onto your animal constructions, there are two major points that stand out to me:

• You are clearly striving to think in 3D space, and to consider the way in which many of your forms exist within it, and how they relate to one another. You leverage the tools that we've explored previously - like contour lines, the use of additional masses, etc. So, in a general sense, you're pushing in the right direction.

• What you're not doing, however, is making as direct use of the resources and feedback that has been made available to you. That is to say, there are things we've contended with in the last lesson's feedback and revisions, along with core principles of the course itself (like those relating to mark making), that you're skipping over entirely.

Based on what I'm seeing here, as well as things I've encountered when critiquing your past work, you're very enthusiastic about learning how to draw and getting into the thick of things, but you are also someone who simply needs to put a lot more energy, effort, and time, into identifying the instructions that you've been given, and applying them consistently as you move forwards. If we continually have to go back over the same issues lesson over lesson, then it becomes a little wasteful.

As shown here, the main issue we were talking about in Lesson 4 - the importance of not cutting back into the silhouettes of forms you've already drawn, and instead building on top of them - appears to have come up again. As I've highlighted, you're pretty freely putting down forms in the scene, then manipulating them as 2D shapes, rather than strictly interacting with them only as though they exist in 3D space.

I think a lot of this comes down to the fact that you're approaching many aspects of your drawings by "sketching" - that is, putting down loose, explorative marks to kind of figure things out first, then putting darker lines to commit. While that is a perfectly valid approach to drawing in general, I really cannot stress enough how this course is not asking you to simply draw. The way in which we draw, and the specific concepts we apply throughout the assigned work is incredibly important. We aren't sketching here - every single mark we put down is something we have to take the time to think through. We are not simply putting lines on a flat page - we are creating solid, tangible, real 3D structures inside of a 3D world. The page itself is just a window that looks out onto this world - or at least, that's the illusion we're continually trying to create, both for the viewer, and for ourselves, because the more we believe in it, the more believable it becomes for others.

Now, these are principles I know you are capable of applying. We can see it in this drawalong you did with the shrimp demo in Lesson 4. You laid down constructions one by one, and layered new 3D forms on top of them, thinking through how they interact in 3D space. Your lines were not sketchy, nor haphazard - they all demonstrated an amount of forethought and planning, likely through proper use of the ghosting method.

There are some drawings that reflect this in this set too - the running gazelle on this page has linework that is quite well thought out, and the way in which you've layered forms upon one another is coming along nicely. There are still some things that can certainly be improved, which I've marked out directly on the page:

• When it comes to building up additional masses, keep thinking about how they wrap around the existing structure. You've done a great job of this with that mass along the middle of the gazelle's back, but the one along the front of its neck feels more like a flat sticker that's been pasted on top of the drawing, because of how it doesn't really cohesively integrate with the 3D structure. 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.

• Another good opportunity to look for are ones where you can bring those back masses down along the sides and actually have them wrap around and integrate with the masses at the shoulders and hips. All quadrupedal animals have these larger muscle groups here (because that's what they rely on to walk and run), but they're not always super obvious. Knowing to look for them can often help, and when you have pieces that can fit together like this, it tends to make the whole construction feel more believable and solid.

• All those same points about thinking about how those masses wrap around the existing structure and how they integrate with one another is important when building up your animals' legs. Many of your masses along the legs don't quite wrap around the existing structure enough - at least not when looking at the design of their silhouettes. Refer back to my Lesson 4 critique for this as well, specifically where I shared the ant leg and dog leg demos, along with a few other diagrams relating to this.

• Your head construction is coming along well, but keep trying to apply the principles from this informal head construction demo as much as possible - going down to the shape of the eye socket, and including the forehead/brow ridge. Given the nature of this course, with the approaches I use to teaching concepts evolving over time, this is definitely one of the more recent and most effective ways I've found to approach head construction, and I will be integrating it back into the main lesson notes/demo material when I have the chance.

• Additionally, if you have space to worry about things like eyelids, try building them up as their own independent masses (one for the upper lid, another for the lower lid). This will generally make it easier to think about how they're actually wrapping around the eyeball, as shown here.

The gazelle is really a great example of the lesson material being done well, and if you consistently demonstrated this same level of understanding (and adherence to the instructions), I would definitely mark the lesson as complete. But unfortunately, just about every other page shows you working in a much sketchier, explorative manner, allowing yourself to jump back and forth between treating your drawing as a collection of lines and shapes on a flat page, rather than strictly working by laying down a base structure and stacking further forms on top as you build up towards your intended end result. Your own words from Lesson 4 do a good job of capturing a correct impression of the instructions:

what ever shape we draw at first should essentially be the 'skeleton' and we should seek to stack other shapes on top

That is, for the most part, correct. Now we're not specifically focusing on any particular anatomical structure (like building a literal skeleton of bones and wrapping specific muscles around that - that's way beyond what we're doing here), but at its core, it shows that you do understand the premise of starting with a simple base structure and wrapping new forms around it in 3 dimensions. You just need to consciously and consistently work in that manner throughout your work in this course.

Now, I am going to be asking for a full redo of this lesson. That will cost you 2 additional credits, and will be posted as a new submission when completed. I strongly recommend that you work on no more than one animal construction in a given day. You're showing a tendency to try and work on many different drawings all at once, rather than really committing as much time as a single given drawing may require to be done to the best of your ability. By limiting yourself to no more than one drawing in a given day, you may feel a little more comfortable slowing down. And of course, if you need more than one day to complete a given drawing, you should feel welcome to break it up across as many sittings or days as that drawing requires.