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

Starting with your organic intersections your first page is hitting the right notes. Your forms feel solid, stable, and supported, and you’re projecting your shadows boldly, so that they cast onto the surfaces below. Just remember to hook your contour curves around the form and draw through the small contour ellipses on the tips of your forms.

On the second page some of your forms are defying gravity. When you practice this exercise in future, think of your forms as being soft and heavy, like well-filled water balloons. Always work from the bottom up, drawing your first form resting on the ground plane, then dropping more dangly sausage forms in from above, one at a time, allowing each one to fall onto the pile, and slump and sag over the forms below, coming to rest in a position where it feels stable and supported.

Moving on to your animal constructions, your linework appears confident, and you’re showing good observational skills.

There are areas where it looks like you may not always be actively conscious of each action you’re taking when working through these exercises, for example I’m noticing is that you often stop short of 2 full circuits around your ellipses. As explained here we insist on students drawing 2-3 times around all of their ellipses before lifting the pen off the page, as this helps to execute them smoothly. I see this has already been called out in your lesson 1,2,3 and 4 critiques, so if something about this point is confusing to you, you can ask for clarification so we can find another way to explain it that helps you to understand what is being asked of you.

You also tend to pile a lot of contour lines onto some of your forms. Contour lines themselves fall into two categories. You've got those that sit along the surface of a single form (this is how they were first introduced in the organic forms with contour lines exercise, because it is the easiest way to do so), and you've got those that define the relationship and intersection between multiple forms - like those from the form intersections exercise. By their very nature, the form intersection type only really allows you to draw one such contour line per intersection, but the first type allows you to draw as many as you want. The question comes down to this: "how many do you really need?"

Unfortunately, that first type of contour line suffers from diminishing returns. The first one you add will probably help a great deal in making that given form feel three dimensional. The second however will help much less - but may still have some use. The third, the fourth... their effectiveness and contribution will continue to drop off sharply, and you're very quickly going to end up in a situation where adding another will not help. I find it pretty rare that more than two is really necessary. Anything else just becomes excessive.

Be sure to consider this when you go through the planning phase of the contour lines you wish to add. Ask yourself what they're meant to contribute. Furthermore, ask yourself if you can actually use the second (form intersection) type instead - these are by their very nature vastly more effective, because of how they actually define the relationship between forms. This relationship causes each form to reinforce the other, solidifying the illusion that they exist in three dimensions. They'll often make the first type somewhat obsolete in many cases. Whenever you do decide that a contour line will be useful, make sure you draw it with due care and attention, using the ghosting method and making every effort to have it fit snugly against the edges of the form, not floating arbitrarily or misaligned.

One area where we make the first type of contour line obsolete by employing the second type is leg construction. I’m happy to see that you’re making an effort to use the sausage method, though you’re frequently forgetting the contour line at each joint which we use to define how the forms intersect, reinforcing the solidity of the construction. On this page you’d added quite a few contour lines to the surface of single sausage forms, which I have specifically discussed as an issue in previous feedback.

Another point that was discussed in your lesson 4 feedback is the idea of only taking actions on your constructions in 3D by sticking to the following rule. “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. We can see this most easily in this example of what happens when we cut back into the silhouette of a form.”

I can see some pages, such as these deer, where you’re obviously making an effort to try to follow this rule, along with others, such as the raccoons, where this doesn’t appear to have been a priority for you. For example, I’ve marked out several places where you’ve taken actions in 2D on this construction using red where it looks like you’ve cut back inside the silhouette of forms you have already drawn, and blue where you’ve extended off existing forms with one-off lines and flat partial shapes. Instead we want you to construct complete new forms with their own fully enclosed silhouettes wherever you want to add to your construction or change something. Here is how we could handle the additions on the legs. Giving the additions their own complete silhouettes that actually explain how they connect to and wrap around those underlying sausage forms in 3D space.

Creating believable, solid, three dimensional constructions despite drawing on a flat page requires us to first and foremost convince ourselves of this illusion, this lie we're telling, as discussed here back in Lesson 2. The more our approach reinforces the illusion, the more we make new marks that reinforce it even further. The more our marks break the illusion, the more marks we make that then further break the illusion, for us and for everyone else.

While in this course we're doing everything very explicitly, it's to create such a solid belief and understanding of how the things we draw exist in 3D space, that when we draw them more loosely with sketching and other less explicit approaches, we can still produce marks that fall in line with the idea that this thing we're drawing exists in 3D.

In lesson 5 we introduce a very effective tool for students to use to flesh out their constructions “in 3D”- additional masses. I’m happy to see that you’ve been experimenting with additional masses on the majority of your constructions, although it can be quite puzzling to figure out exactly how to design their silhouette in a way that feels convincing.

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.

It is good that you’re including additional masses on many of your constructions, but on the whole I think you could be much more intentional and specific with how you craft their design. I’ve marked out a few examples of specific issues on this squirrel.

• A highlights an area under the neck where your additional mass peels away from your underlying neck structure, leaving a hole in the construction. This is indicative that you are still thinking about these as stamping flat shapes on a flat drawing. Imagine you’re pressing a piece of putty against a solid cylinder here. If you leave a gap between the structures (instead of wrapping the putty against the cylinder) then the additional form will fall off the construction.

• B circles an area where you’d cut off the mass on the chest where it passes behind the front leg, splitting it into two partial shapes. The mass doesn’t stop existing where it passes between the legs, so “draw through” and give it a complete, fully enclosed silhouette.

• C is an example where you’d bridged the gap between the additional mass and the ear with a one-off line. There’s no way to understand how this line is supposed to sit in 3D space, so it reminds the viewer that the drawing is flat, and more importantly it reminds you that what you’re doing is just putting lines on a flat piece of paper.

• D appears to be an arbitrary gap in the silhouette of the additional form. You don’t need to try to draw the additional mass in a single stroke. In fact, it will help you to design your masses more intentionally if you break them down into a series of strokes. Drawing a smooth continuous line for each curve, but picking the pen up and starting a new line (going through the stages of the ghosting method) where you want to create a distinct change of trajectory (meaning a corner in the silhouette of the mass).

• E marks two examples where you appear to be actively avoiding having your masses overlap the underlying forms. This means that you're still very much thinking about it in terms of these shapes existing in two dimensions, rather than as forms that can interact with one another in 3D. Instead, allow yourself - hell, encourage yourself - to let those forms overlap. This is a very important aspect of the exercise as a whole (in that constructional drawing is an exercise). It forces us to consider how these forms we're combining exist together in three dimensions, and how they relate to one another within it, so as to rewire the way in which our brains think about the shapes we're drawing, not as shapes on a flat page, but as directly representative of structures in a 3D world.

• F marks two spots where you’re using inward curves in your mass’ designs where they are exposed to fresh air. But there is nothing present in the construction to press into the masses here and introduce such complexity. Instead we’d want the masses to stay simple where they are exposed to fresh air, but using an outward curve.

On this image you’ll find some corrections applied. The mass under the neck wraps around the initial cylinder form, with not holes or gaps. The mass on the chest has been completed by drawing through where it passes behind the leg. The mass behind the ear has been crafted to hook around behind the ear, making adding a one-off line unnecessary. The mass under the belly has a complete silhouette, and I’ve added another mass to the front of the thigh (in green) instead of pressing an inward curve into the silhouette of a mass where it is exposed to fresh air. The masses on top of the back and neck have been allowed to overlap the underlying forms and wrap around the neck and torso. The key point here is that in thinking about this structure as it exists in three dimensions, there are still cases where instead of having one form overlap another, we might have it curve around it, for example the large red mass on the back doesn't overlap the big shoulder mass, but rather wraps along its silhouette. This is because the shoulder mass actually protrudes out of the structure - there's volume there, so as the red mass presses up against it we get a specific inward curve, interlocking these two elements. The more interlocked they are, the more spatial relationships we define between the masses, the more solid and grounded everything appears.

When it comes to constructing paws, I'd like you to study these notes on foot construction where Uncomfortable shows how to introduce structure to the foot by drawing a boxy form- 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 structure that reads as being solid and three dimensional. Then we can use similarly boxy forms to attach toes. Please try using this strategy for constructing paws in future.

The next thing I wanted to talk about is head construction. 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:

• 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.

• 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.

• 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 rhino head demo it can be adapted for a wide array of animals.

As there are a number of areas where I would like you to demonstrate your understanding, I will be assigning some revisions.

This feedback is, by necessity, very dense, and I expect you may need to read through it a few times to absorb it all. I also suggest you take notes of anything that stands out an refer to them before starting each construction. Going back over past material, past feedback, etc. should absolutely be a part of your regular approach, but taking notes means that it's easier to keep those important things in mind without having to go back and reread all that feedback every time. Either way - it is up to the students to apply whatever learning strategies helps them apply the feedback they're receiving, and if that is something in particular that you feel you are trying at, but where applying that feedback is still a struggle, you may want to reflect upon what aspects of your strategy are and aren't working.

Additionally, I'd like you to adhere to the following restrictions when approaching these revisions:

• Don't work on more than one construction in a day. You can and should absolutely spread a single construction across multiple sittings or days if that's what you need to do the work to the best of your current ability (taking as much time as you need to construct each form, draw each shape, and execute each mark), but if you happen to just put the finishing touches on one construction, don't start the next one until the following day. This is to encourage you to push yourself to the limits of how much you're able to put into a single construction, and avoid rushing ahead into the next.

• Write down beside each construction the dates of the sessions you spent on it, along with a rough estimate of how much time you spent in that session.

Please complete 4 pages of animal constructions.