Hello Wires, I'll be the teaching assistant handling your lesson 4 critique.

Starting with your organic forms you've done a good job of sticking to the characteristics of simple sausages that are introduced here, and your lines appear smooth and confident which is great.

There's just two things I'd like you to be aware of when practising this exercise in future:

• I noticed that sometimes you've placed an ellipse on an end of your forms where the contour curves tell us it is facing away from the viewer, I've crossed them out and added some that were missing here. Remember that these ellipses are no different from the contour curves, in that they're all just contour lines running along the surface of the form. It's just that when the tip faces the viewer, we can see all the way around the surface, resulting in a full ellipse rather than just a partial curve. But where the end is pointing away from us, there would be no ellipse at all. Take a look at this breakdown of the different ways in which our contour lines can change the way in which the sausage is perceived - note how the contour curves and the ellipses are always consistent, giving the same impression of which ends are facing towards the viewer and which are facing away.

• Keep in mind that the degree of your contour lines should be shifting wider as we slide along the sausage form, moving farther away from the viewer. This is also influenced by the way in which the sausages themselves turn in space, but farther = wider is a good rule of thumb to follow. If you're unsure as to why that is, review the Lesson 1 ellipses video.

Moving on to your insect constructions, you're doing a good job of starting your constructions with simple solid forms, and many of these constructions show a strong sense of these forms existing in 3D space. There are a few things to bring to your attention that should help you to get more out of these constructional exercises in future.

The biggest issue throughout the set is that you appear to be going back over your lines a lot, possibly to make corrections, or possibly because this is how you habitually sketch when not being mindful of every line you draw. In ending up with several lines representing the edges of the same form, the viewer is given a number of different possible interpretations. Regardless of which interpretation they choose to follow, there will always be another present there to contradict it, which ultimately undermines their suspension of disbelief and reminds them that they're looking at a flat, two dimensional drawing. Furthermore, the ghosting method emphasises the importance of making one mark only. Correcting mistakes isn't actually helpful, given that the end result of the exercise is far less relevant and significant than the actual process used to achieve it. Rather, having a habit of correcting your mistakes can lean into the idea of not investing as much time into each individual stroke, and so it's something that should be avoided in favour of putting as much time as is needed to executing each mark to the best of your current ability.

There are places where you've added quite aggressively thick line weight to areas that seem to be a bit arbitrary. The most effective use of additional line weight, given the bounds and limitations of this course is to reserve it for clarifying overlaps as explained here, and restricting it to localised areas where these overlaps occur. What this keeps us from doing is adding line weight to more random places, or worse, attempting to correct or hide mistakes with additional line weight. Keep your line weight subtle, it should be a whisper, not a shout. Usually a single confident, ghosted, super imposed stroke will be enough to create the desired effect. Sometimes I think you're using thick line weight to indicate the shadow side of a form. Areas of black should be reserved for cast shadows only, I recommend reviewing this video where Uncomfortable explains the difference between form shadows and cast shadows.

The next point I need to talk about relates to differentiating between the actions we can take when interacting with a construction, which fall into two groups:

1 Actions in 2D space, where we're just putting lines down on a page, without necessarily considering the specific nature of the relationships between the forms they're meant to represent and the forms that already exist in the scene.

2 Actions in 3D space, where we're actually thinking about how each form we draw exists in 3D space, and how it relates to the existing 3D structures already present. We draw them in a manner that actually respects the 3D nature of what's already there, and even reinforces it.

Because we're drawing on a flat piece of paper, we have a lot of freedom to make whatever marks we choose, but many of those marks would contradict the illusion you're trying to create and remind the viewer that they're just looking at a series of lines on a flat piece of paper. In order to avoid this and stick only to the marks that reinforce the illusion we're creating, we can force ourselves to adhere to certain rules as we build up our constructions. Rules that respect the solidity of our construction.

For example - 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.

For example, I've marked on your mantis in red where it looks like you cut back inside the silhouette of forms you had already drawn.One thing I did notice is that some of the instances of cutting into forms (though not all) came down to the fact that your ellipses would come out a little loose (which is totally normal), and then you'd pick one of the inner edges to serve as the silhouette of the ball form you were constructing. This unfortunately would leave some stray marks outside of its silhouette, which does create some visual issues. Generally it is best to treat the outermost perimeter of the ellipse as the edge of the silhouette, so everything else remains contained within it. This diagram shows which lines to use on a loose ellipse.

On the same image I marked in blue some examples of where you'd extended off existing forms using single lines and partial, flat shapes, not quite providing enough information for us to understand how they actually connect to the existing structure in 3D space.

Instead, when we want to build on our construction or alter something we add new 3D forms to the existing structure. Forms with their own complete silhouettes - and by establishing how those forms either connect or relate to what's already present in our 3D scene. We can do this either by defining the intersection between them with contour lines (like in lesson 2's form intersections exercise), or by wrapping the silhouette of the new form around the existing structure as shown here.

This is all part of understanding that everything we draw is 3D, and therefore needs to be treated as such in order for both you and the viewer to believe in that lie.

You can see this in practice in this beetle horn demo, as well as in this ant head demo. You can also see some good examples of this in the lobster and shrimp demos on the informal demos page. As Uncomfortable has been pushing this concept more recently, it hasn't been fully integrated into the lesson material yet (it will be when the overhaul reaches Lesson 4). Until then, those submitting for official critiques basically get a preview of what is to come.

The last thing I wanted to talk about is leg construction. It is good to see you've made a real effort to stick to the sausage method of leg construction. You do appear to be drawing around most of your sausage forms more than once though. We ask students to draw around ellipses 2 full times before lifting the pen of the page as this leans into the arm's natural tendency to make elliptical motions and helps students to draw them smoothly. Sausage forms require a different series of motions, so drawing around them twice isn't helpful, it will just make your work messier.

When using the sausage method of leg construction, pay attention to where you place your contour curves, as the method is quite specific. I've drawn over them in red on this copy of the sausage method diagram. These contour curves represent the intersection where the two sausage forms connect together in 3D space (like from the form intersections exercise in lesson 2) and occur in the region where the sausage forms overlap. They are not ellipses or balls drawn on top of the joints, which is what appears to be happening in this construction. There's no need to add extra contour curves to the surface of an individual sausage form as seen on this ant, they stiffen the construction.

It is great to see that you're exploring building onto your basic sausage armatures to add complexity and make your construction more closely represent the insect in your reference. I have a few diagrams and demos to share with you, and I'd like you to study them carefully, they show how to build onto the construction with complete 3D forms.

• Diagram 1.

• Diagram 2.

• Ant leg demo.

• Another example in the context of a dog leg as this method should be used throughout lesson 5 too.

Conclusion

Your work shows a lot of potential, but redrawing your lines is undermining the solidity of your constructions. I'm going to ask you to complete 2 additional pages to address this issue before moving forward. Make sure to use the ghosting method in full for every line you draw- use the planning phase to ask yourself what each mark is going to contribute to your construction. Do not attempt to correct or hide mistakes, and remember to reserve additional line weight for clarifying overlaps, keeping it subtle.