Everything we do is a choice. So, submitting early suggests that you chose not to follow the instruction to the letter. As a side note, that whole explanation suggests to me that you may have forgotten about the 50% rule introduced in lesson 0, that stipulates how you should be spending only half of your drawing time on courses/studies (including Drawabox and whatever else you might be doing to improve your drawing skills), and spend the other half on drawing for the sake of drawing.

Now, based on all the extra drawings you did in between, I think you may not have understood why I added the stipulation I did previously. I what I asked was this:

I want you to take your time with each and every drawing, doing no more than one in a single day

The reason was that I suspected you had a tendency to draw too quickly, not investing as much time as you otherwise could have into every single mark you drew, into thinking through how it contributed to the construction and what you were looking to achieve with it. So, by having you just do one of these assigned drawings per day, it means having your entire drawing session focus on that one construction. To force yourself to slow down, to think more before every single stroke, and to spend as much time as you reasonably can studying your reference.

Now, to answer your questions:

• I think the confusion comes from distinguishing between flat shapes and flat forms. What you should be avoiding is drawing flat shapes, where you're only thinking about how they're shaped on the page itself. The intent, whether you realize it or not, is to draw a shape on the page, so you focus on how it exists on in the page itself - not how it represents a form in 3D space. Because we're drawing on a page, we have incredible freedom to draw things that are flat. That is why this sort of thing demands focus and attention, to ensure that we're always thinking about how the things we draw exist in 3D space. "Flat form" - like the leaves in lesson 3, and like the tail feathers here - are forms that still exist in 3D space, despite being flat.

• There is absolutely no benefit to purposely attempting more challenging subject matter. Keep in mind that this course is not about learning how to draw plants, insects, animals, vehicles, etc. It is about learning how to train your brain to think in 3D space, while drawing on a flat page. It is about developing your spatial reasoning skills, and we do that by looking at the problem through the lens of these different topics. We can do this just as well with simple subjects as we can with more complex ones, as they're all just at their core an arrangement of forms. More complicated animals will be more likely to distract you from being able to focus on those simple forms, so they can definitely make it trickier to learn especially as you're just getting comfortable. There is absolutely nothing wrong with just taking the "easy" ones.

• The sausage structure does not represent the skeletal structure, or any actual anatomical "level". We are, primarily, focusing on what we actually see - the forms, the masses. If we ignore all of the bumps and masses along a leg to get a simple smooth form, we're likely to get a chain of sausages that have ends of different sizes. Then, to simplify it even further, we make both ends as big as the smallest, leaving us with forms that we can construct easily. From there, we build back up, wrapping additional masses around them, always cognizant of how everything we're working with exists in three dimensions, as though we're building up a sculpture from putty, layering them as needed. Now, a wing doesn't generally look like a sausage chain, so to put it simply, you just wouldn't use the sausage method there. We'd block them out as larger forms and build on top of them, as shown here.

Now, looking at your revisions there are a number of areas for improvement. I'll list them below with bolded titles so you can focus on each individual one separately, rather than trying to process everything all at once, as I did before.

Your basic sausage chains are missing the contour line defining the joints between sausages. Note the sausage diagram I shared with you in my last critique. In the center of the diagram, I explain that the joint between each pair of sausages should be reinforced with a single contour line. This helps make the sausage structure appear solid and three dimensional, and is incredibly important.

You've got a number of places where you don't draw through forms, or don't draw forms as being fully enclosed silhouettes. Take a look at the lines I've highlighted here. Each of those red lines goes over a line that should have been part of a single continuous line defining the silhouette of a fully enclosed form. This is a sign that you're still leaning into the idea that you're drawing lines on a page, not actually constructing individual solid forms in 3D space. As I explained before, we have a lot of freedom in the fact that we're drawing, and that freedom is what makes this difficult.

You pretty consistently draw your additional forms as being way too complex. As such, the vast majority of them read as being flat shapes, rather than actual solid, 3D forms.

The additional masses you used on this hare were definitely the best of the lot, specifically because they were drawn to be far more simple.

Try thinking of additional masses like this: when floating in the void on their own, one of these masses is just a ball or blob of soft meat in its simplest form. All of its curvature points outwards, because there is nothing to push in on it. When, however, we press it against an existing structure, the area touching that structure will curve inwards, introducing more complexity to the mass, as shown here.

The thing here is that we do not simply draw these masses in isolation - we do not get to design how they're shaped. Their shapes exist in direct response to the other forms present on their construction. That means that we have to be aware of the forms that cause every bit of complexity in these forms. We cannot draw corners on them, or inward curves, without being specifically aware of the nature of the structure that is causing those corners and inward curves to exist. It is very easy to just draw a corner or an inwards curve and have done with it - but doing so without a clear awareness of what is causing it will make the drawing unrealistic, and will undermine the viewer's suspension of disbelief.

While we can be aware of those forms without drawing them, it is, especially when you're just getting used to this, best to actually define those forms as well. A common example is how the mass at the top of the spine of many animals comes down and pushes against the shoulder mass. Without knowing that the shoulder mass is there, we can't know to wrap the form we're adding around it. Therefore there is a lot of demands placed on us to understand the many elements that make up our construction.

The last thing I wanted to call out was your head construction. It is moving in the right direction overall, but you need to keep pushing the idea that the eye socket, muzzle, cheekbones, brow ridge, etc. all come together, fitting snugly like a puzzle. Try to avoid having any spacing between them, or having them float loosely from one another.

This is something I've started pushing students to do more recently, and so it isn't as apparent in the lesson material which I'm looking to update in the coming months. You can see it demonstrated in this quick demo however.

I'd like you to do the same revisions I assigned last time. Six animal drawings, no more than one per day, putting your whole session into that single drawing. Find ways to take more time, think and plan through each and every mark you drawn, keep looking at your reference as often as possible, and think about how your forms exist in 3D space, how they relate to one another within that space, and how every element of the silhouettes you draw is impacted by other entities that exist in 3D space.

Remember that it is easiest to treat a drawing as just a series of lines and shapes on a page, because that is what is true. In order to work as though we are building something solid in 3D space, it requires an incredible amount of mental focus, especially now. The goal is to do this with such patience and care, so many times that this false narrative, this illusion, this lie becomes our truth. We are rewiring our brains to understand the things we draw on a flat page, as though they were truly three dimensional.

Since my two critiques have exceeded a cumulative 3000 words at this point, I'd like you to submit your revisions as a new lesson 5 submission, which will cost you another 2 credits.