Hello Tidesphere, thank you for reuploading your pages. Sometimes Imgur doesn't save all the images correctly, but they're all there in the fresh link.

Starting with your organic forms it looks like you're aware of, and aiming towards the characteristics of simple sausages that are introduced here. There are a few deformities here and there- things like one end larger than the other, or on end getting flattened or lopsided, but on the whole I think you're on the right track. Keep working on that smooth confident execution of your stroke, some of the little wobbles probably come from hesitating and second guessing your stoke while the pen is already on the page.

Your contour curves are well aligned and you're doing a good job of hooking them around the form.

Most of your contour curves are sticking to the same degree. 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. You can also see a good example of how to vary your contour curves in this diagram showing the different ways in which our contour lines can change the way in which the sausage is perceived.

For this exercise, it does help to include an ellipse on the ends of the sausages that are facing the viewer. These are no different from the rest of the contour curves, except that since the end is facing the viewer, we can see all the way around the full ellipse, instead of just a partial curve.

Moving on to your insect constructions you usually do a good job of starting with simple solid forms as discussed on the lesson intro page and shown in the various demos. There are a couple of constructions like this and this where it looks like you've jumped straight into trying to draw pretty much the whole body in one go. For constructional drawing we never add more complexity than can be supported by the underlying structures at any given point. This means your first step must be dead simple. Usually ellipses for rounded forms, or sausage forms, maybe a branch (using the lesson 3 branch exercise instructions) or a box. If you cannot think of the name of the form you are drawing, it is probably too complex to use as a starting point, and you'll need to think of something simpler, then add the complexity you need step by step, piece by piece. Uncomfortable discusses the process of constructional drawing in this section of lesson 2.

I can see an improvement in the confidence of your lines following the discussion we had about it on Discord, good work. I'll re-link this comment from Uncomfortable where he talks about hesitation being a choice, so it will be easy for you to refer back to it without trawling though Discord. I want to encourage you to keep focused on making each stroke with confidence as you move forward, as there are still a few wobbly lines sneaking in here and there.

While we're talking about confidence, remember to draw around your ellipses two full times before lifting your pen off the page. This will help you to keep them smooth and even. I can see you're doing this sometimes, but not consistently, and it is something we ask students to do for every ellipse they freehand in this course, as introduced here.

One of the aims for this lesson is to develop an understanding of how the forms you’re drawing exist in 3d space and connecting them together with specific relationships. We want you to be able to fool the viewer into thinking it's 3D.

To help you reach this goal, lets talk about how to differentiate 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 work here in red where you cut back inside the silhouette of forms you had already drawn. I also wanted to note that there are some places where you've done a good job of thinking about how your forms exist in 3D space, such as where you've wrapped the segments of the abdomen around the curvature of the underlying form here. On the same image I marked in blue where you attempted to extend your silhouette without really providing enough information for us to understand how those new additions were meant to exist in 3D space. It looks like you're approaching adding detail so some of your constructions in the same manner we approached edge detail on leaves in the previous lesson- using single lines. Unfortunately, as explained here this only really works for forms that are already flat.

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.

So, here I've marked how we could draw some of the extensions I'd marked in blue earlier as complete forms with their own silhouettes.

The next thing I wanted to talk about is leg construction. It looks like you tried out lots of different strategies for constructing legs. It's not uncommon for students to be aware of the sausage method as introduced here, but to decide that the legs they're looking at don't actually seem to look like a chain of sausages, so they use some other strategy.

The key to keep in mind here is that the sausage method is not about capturing the legs precisely as they are - it is about laying in a base structure or armature that captures both the solidity and the gestural flow of a limb in equal measure, where the majority of other techniques lean too far to one side, either looking solid and stiff or gestural but flat. Once in place, we can then build on top of this base structure with more additional forms as shown in these examples here, here, and in this ant leg demo and also here on this dog leg demo as this method should be used throughout lesson 5 too.

I do think you probably had the sausage method in mind for the majority of your constructions, but this method is quite specific and there are a couple of ways you could be sticking to it more closely.

• Keep these forms simple, sticking as closely as possible to the characteristics introduced here.

• The sausage forms should overlap, so that we can explain how they connect together in 3D space using a contour curve. These are highlighted in red on this copy of the sausage method diagram.

• Be sure to "draw through" your forms when working on these constructional exercises. This is something you usually do well, but I noticed some of the far side legs on this page get cut off where they are obscured by something else. If you don't complete your forms then they become partial 2D shapes. To enforce the 3D illusion draw the parts you can't see, like you have X-Ray vision. This will also help you to develop your spatial reasoning skills.

Your texture is showing a great deal of improvement on your lesson 3 submission, nicely done. Occasionally you do slip into working explicitly for example on the wing of this construction. I have a hunch you may have put quite a lot of black onto the eye of this construction because it has a darker local color than the rest of the insect. Keep in mind what forms are present in the construction, and remember that we're using cast shadows to implicitly describe the smaller forms running along an objects surface. We're telling the viewer how that surface might feel to run your hand along it, which has nothing to do with what color that surface happens to be.

Conclusion

There are some promising elements to your submission, and I can see that you've been working hard to address things that have been brought up in your previous critiques. I won't be moving you on to the next lesson just yet, as the concepts in these lessons build one one another and if we send you forward with unaddressed issues they may get exacerbated in the next lesson and undermine your efforts to get the most out of these exercises.

I'll be asking you to complete 3 more pages of insect constructions. For these please focus on the following key areas:

• Start with simple solid forms for the 3 (or 2) major masses as shown in the lesson instructions.

• Once you have a solid foundation in place try to build on your construction by taking actions in 3D as discussed above.

• Stick as closely as you can to the sausage method when constructing your legs.

If anything said to you here is unclear or confusing you are allowed to ask questions.