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

Starting with your organic intersections you're doing a good job drawing most of your forms slumping and sagging around one another with a sense of gravity, and for the most part I can see you're thinking about how these forms interact in 3D space. I do have a few tips that should help you to get more out of this exercise in future.

• We want all the forms in the pile to feel stable and supported, like we could walk away from the pile and nothing would fall down. If we look at the left side of your first page, you've got two forms near the bottom that are going behind all the other forms in the pile. So, although there are other forms below them on the 2D space of the paper, if we think about what is happening in 3D space, the other forms are in front here, and cannot be underneath to support these forms. I've indicated the gaps underneath these two forms here and here. This makes these two forms appear weightless, so keep that in mind in future.

• Notice how for the second edit on the leftmost form I've "drawn through" to complete the whole form. Not drawing through your forms in this exercise isn't a mistake, per se, as it isn't explicitly laid out in the exercise instructions. However it is something Tofu asked you to do in your feedback for this exercise in lesson 2. "I'd like you to draw through all of your forms when attempting this exercise again in the future, it will help reinforce your understanding of the 3D space you're creating." Granted this was some 3 months ago, but this highlights the importance of reviewing the feedback you receive as often as necessary in order to remember to apply it to your work. It is all written for your benefit, after all. Drawing through all your forms can make this exercise more difficult at first, because it forces you to figure out how the whole form exists within the 3D space you're trying to create, but doing this will help you develop your spatial reasoning skills, so you'll get more out of it. I've drawn through a couple more incomplete forms on this page in red, just to be very clear on what I'm asking you to do here.

• On that same image I've traced over a couple of forms that are getting too complex. Try to stick to simple sausage forms for this exercise. The more complicated a form is, the more difficult it is to assert as being a solid 3D form, keep them as simple as you can.

• Some of your contour curves aren't following the curvature of the form they're drawn on, which undermines the 3D illusion. I've traced over a couple of examples in red here as well as drawing a more correct example in green.

• You're generally projecting your shadows far enough to project onto the forms below, but their direction isn't always consistent. If we take the large form at the top of this page as an example, it appears to be casting two completely separate shadows, one to the left and another to the right. You're allowed to mark the light source on your page with an arrow if it helps you to keep track of it.

Moving on to your animal constructions I can see you've made a real effort to follow the lesson instructions and on the whole your work is coming along quite well.

There are a couple of points that have been raised in prior critiques that are undermining your efforts to get the most out of these exercises.

During your lesson 4 critique I discussed the difference between taking actions in 2D and taking actions in 3D when building on your constructions, as well as reiterating the following rule that ThatOneMushroomGuy introduced you to in lesson 3. 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. This diagram shows the various actions we can take on a sphere, and explains that for organic constructions we'd like you to work strictly by adding in 3D.

Right now you're making a lot of small alterations to your forms' silhouettes with single lines. I've marked a few examples on this reindeer. I've used red to indicate areas where it looks like you cut inside forms you had already drawn, and blue for extensions. Looking through your work I think there are two main causes of this.

• It looks like you're drawing around some of your leg sausage forms twice. We ask students to draw around ellipses two full times before lifting the pen off the page, as this leans into the arm's natural tendency to make elliptical motions and helps students to execute them smoothly. As these sausage forms require a different series of motions to execute, drawing around them twice doesn't give the same benefits, so please only draw around sausage forms once in future.

• It looks like you're either redrawing some of your lines to make corrections, or using additional line weight to correct or hide mistakes.

As taking actions in 3D and correct use of line weight formed a significant portion of your lesson 4 critique, I'd like you to carefully reread your past feedback for a fuller explanation on these points. It is often necessary for students to take their own steps in ensuring that they do what they need to in order to ensure they're addressing the issues that have been called out. It's very easy to simply come back from a break and continue forwards with the next lesson without consideration for what issues may have been called out (or perhaps having them more loosely in mind, but without specifics), and each student needs to decide what it is they need to apply the information they're given as effectively as they can. For some that means reviewing the past feedback periodically, for others it means taking notes, and for yet more it's a combination of the two or something else entirely. If anything said to you here or previously is unclear or confusing you are allowed to ask questions.

Moving on, where in lesson 4 we introduced the idea of building on our constructions with complete 3D forms, here in lesson 5 we get a bit more specific about how we design the silhouette of these additional forms. 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.

So, for starters, I can see a few places where it looks like you've intended to build on your constructions with complete 3D forms, but didn't quite give those new forms their own complete silhouette. Here I've completed a couple of these on your reindeer. The one under the neck just needed a small additional stroke to enclose the silhouette. The one over the rump I've redrawn entirely, stretching it down from the spine and wrapping it around the side of the body, notice how I've pressed this additional mass up against the top of the thigh mass. The more interlocked they are, the more spatial relationships we define between the masses, the more solid and grounded everything appears. I also completed the boxy muzzle form by establishing how it connects to the edge of the eye socket and the cranial ball in 3D space, but I'll talk more about heads later.

The design of your additional masses is heading in the right direction, I can see that you're designing them in a way that clearly defines the relationship between the additional mass and the underlying structures in 3D space, though I do have some advice that should help you to use them more effectively in future.

I've used this cow to mark some examples. I started by making the shoulder mass larger, as indicated with the blue ellipse. We can think of the shoulder and thigh masses as a simplification of the bulky area housing some of the larger muscles that help the animal to walk, so don't be afraid to be more generous with it. A large shoulder mass will come in handy for anchoring additional masses to the construction.

1- There was a section of this additional mass that was running right along the edge of the neck - this is two 2D shapes interacting with one another, but it's not a 3D relationship that you're defining. To make it 3D, you actually have to wrap along the surface of the underlying forms. I've used a green arrow to emphasise where I'd pulled this mass around the neck. I've also made use of the larger shoulder mass to press against this additional mass.

2- This additional mass had inward curves where it was exposed to fresh air and there was nothing to press against it and cause such complexity. I've replaced them with a simple outward curve.

3- This was just a line. I've redrawn it as a complete 3D form with its own silhouette, wrapping it around the other additional masses.

The next thing I wanted to talk about is leg construction. It's great to see you using the sausage method, and you're doing better at sticking to simple sausage forms for your base armatures than during lesson 4, nicely done. You're a little inconsistent about remembering to apply contour curves for intersections at the joints, I've added some of them on this cow as an example. I can see from some of your other pages that you do understand how to add these curves, but it is still worth mentioning that using contour lines to define how different forms connect to one another is an incredibly useful tool. It saves us from having to add other stand-alone contour lines along the length of individual forms, and reinforces the illusion of solidity very effectively.

I wanted to mention that I can see that you're starting to explore the use of additional masses along your leg structures, but this can be pushed farther. A lot of these focus primarily on forms that actually impact the silhouette of the overall leg, but there's value in exploring the forms that exist "internally" within that silhouette - 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 an example of what I mean, from another student's work - as you can see, Uncomfortable has blocked out masses along the leg there, and included the one fitting in between them all, even though it doesn't influence the silhouette. 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 yet further push the value of these constructional exercises and puzzles.

When it comes to your feet, I have some advice on how you can tackle the construction of the base foot structure, and then the toes. As shown here on another student's work, we can use boxy forms - that is, forms whose corners are defined in such a way that they imply the distinction between the different planes within its silhouette, without necessarily having to define those edges themselves - to lay down a structured that reads as being solid and three dimensional. Then we can use similarly boxy forms to attach toes.

Continuing on, I wanted to discuss head construction a little. 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:

1- 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.

2- 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.

3- 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.

Try your best to employ 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 banana-headed rhino it can be adapted for a wide array of animals.

There are some strong elements to your work, but before I mark this as complete I'm going to need to see evidence that you've understood and applied the point about altering silhouettes of forms you have already drawn, as this has been pointed out as an issue 3 lessons in a row now.

If you find that you're redrawing lines and/or adding line weight to make corrections automatically then this is a sign that you will want to invest more time into the planning stage of the ghosting method as you move forward. Every mark you add to your constructions should serve a clear purpose and be the result of a conscious decision.

Please submit 1 additional page of organic intersections and 4 additional pages of animal constructions.

For each of these, I'd like you to note down the dates on which you worked on each given construction, along with a rough estimate of how long each session took. You are welcome and encouraged to spread your work on a given construction across as many days as are necessary, but refrain from working on more than one construction on a given day. Meaning, if you end up putting the finishing touches on one, do not pick up the next until the following day.