Uncomfortable

Jumping in with your arrows, I can see that you're doing a good job of executing the side edges of these structures with a lot of confidence, which helps to lean into the fluidity with which they move through space. You're also applying a generous size differential between the opposite ends to convey a strong sense of foreshortening as applied to the positive space of the structures. You're also very clearly taking into consideration foreshortening's impact on the negative space, allowing the gaps between your zigzagging sections - this is something I see the most growth in going from the first page to the second, although as is the case with most students, it can be a bit tricky and will likely continue to improve with practice.

Looking at your sausages with contour lines,

• You're making good headway in terms of sticking with the characteristics of simple sausages - this does of course have room for further improvement (which is normal), primarily in terms of avoiding cases where the ends get more stretched out, or where the midsection widens slightly. The main thing I'm looking for here is that you're consciously working to adhere to those characteristics as described in the instructions, which does appear to be the case. As long as you continue doing so, and keep leaning into engaging your whole arm from the shoulder, the consistency with which you hit these characteristics will continue to improve.

• You're drawing your contour lines with confidence, which helps to produce evenly shaped ellipses and curves that wrap convincingly around the sausages' forms - although since your curves tend to be narrower, it's unclear whether this would also extend to your wider ones (the wider the degree, the more we benefit from engaging the whole arm from the shoulder).

• Right now it seems that the degree you're choosing for your contour lines is somewhat arbitrary, or otherwise consistent throughout each sausage's length. This has been a common issue for students (especially prior to our update of the first section of Lesson 2's video/demo material in early october, which was after you completed the box challenge - we used to rely more exclusively on the explanation from Lesson 1's ellipses section), but it is now addressed more in-depth in both the video for this exercise, and here in the written material, so be sure to give those a look.

• Similarly, make sure that the ellipses you're placing on the tips of your sausages follow the trend of the degree of the curves that precede them, rather than defaulting to drawing them all as circles.

Continuing onto the texture section, one thing to keep in mind is that the concepts we introduce relating to texture rely on skills our students generally don't have right now - because they're the skills this entire course is designed to develop. That is, spatial reasoning. Understanding how the textural forms sit on a given surface, and how they relate to the surfaces around them (which is necessary to design the shadow they would cast) is a matter of understanding 3D spatial relationships. The reason we introduce it here is to provide context and direction for what we'll explore later - similarly to the rotated boxes/organic perspective boxes in Lesson 1 introducing a problem we engage with more thoroughly in the box challenge. Ultimately my concern right now is just how closely you're adhering to the underlying steps and procedure we prescribe (especially those in these reminders).

I can see that you are making some use of this methodology (primarily in your texture analyses), although as you continue to explore textural problems through the rest of this course, be sure to push yourself to use this methodology - tedious as it may be - to the exclusion of all others. While it's true that there are certainly going to be shadows that are cast that are so small they can't reasonably be executed using our two step methodology, in such cases it's better to actually leave them out, for the following reasons:

• A designed shape, despite not being something we can create quite as small as a one-off stroke, tapers in a more nuanced, delicate fashion, whereas a one-off stroke is more likely to end in a manner that feels more sudden. Thus, the shapes lean better into our goal of creating a gradient that transitions from black to white (and ultimately we have to pick a point for the shadows to drop off altogether anyway, so pushing a little farther with singular strokes isn't strictly necessary).

• Drawing in one-off strokes allows us to lean more into drawing directly from observation (as opposed to observing, understanding the forms that we see as they exist in 3D space, then creating shadows based on that understanding), which can be very tempting as it can allow us to create more visually pleasing things without all of the extra baggage of thinking in 3D. But of course, 3D spatial reasoning is the purpose of this course.

Moving onto the form intersections, this exercise serves two main purposes:

• Similarly to the textures, it introduces the problem of the intersection lines themselves, which students are not expected to understand how to apply successfully, but rather just make an attempt at - this will continue to be developed from lessons 3-7, and this exercise will return in the homework in lessons 6 and 7 for additional analysis, and advice where it is deemed to be necessary). As it stands the manner in which you're tackling the intersection lines shows that you're thinking about how your forms relate to one another in 3D space, which is exactly what we hope to see. Do however remember to limit your use of line weight in this course to the manner described here in Lesson 1.

• The other, far more important use of this exercise (at least in the context of this stage in the course) is that it is essentially a combination of everything we've introduced thus far. The principles of linework, the use of the ghosting method, the concepts surrounding ellipses along with their axes/degrees, perspective, foreshortening, convergence, the Y method, and so forth - all of it is present in this exercise. Where we've already confirmed your general grasp of these concepts in isolation in previous exercises, it is in presenting it all together that can really challenge a student's patience and discipline, and so it allows us to catch any issues that might interfere with their ability to continue forward as meaningfully as we intend.

While your results are generally coming along okay (primarily in that your linework is confident and smooth), I'm not really seeing the usual signs that you're employing the ghosting method (specifically its planning phase where we plot the start/end points), or the Y method (specifically the "negotiating your corners" element where we also plot various points before deciding on one), which suggests to me that you may be holding to these in spirit, but not with the kind of purposeful intent that this course requires in order to train your auto-pilot to be more reliable when using it in your own work outside of this course.

Additionally, I'm noticing a tendency to force your vanishing points (in particular with your boxes and cylinders) to infinity without taking into consideration that this only occurs when a given set of edges is meant to be oriented perpendicularly to the viewer's angle of sight. Since we're rotating our forms arbitrarily in this exercise, that wouldn't be your specific intent, and therefore you should be including some minimal amount of visible convergence.

And lastly, don't forget that you should be avoiding stretched forms as discussed here and here in the instructions for this exercise, and be sure to draw through all of your freehanded ellipses two full times before lifting your pen.

Lastly, your organic intersections do demonstrate that you're thinking about how your forms drape over one another under the influence of gravity, and you're making good headway in the application of cast shadows to emphasize these relationships. Do however remember that your cast shadows conform to the surfaces they're cast upon, so when those surfaces are rounded (like the other sausages), the shadow being cast would not be shaped as it would if the surface receiving it were flat, as shown here.

All in all, your work is progressing well, though you do have a number of points to keep in mind as you continue forwards, which can be applied as part of your regular warmups. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete.

Jumping right into your arrows, great work - not only are you leaning into the confident execution of those side edges to emphasize the fluidity with which these structures move through space, you're also doing a good job of applying foreshortening to both the positive space and the negative space of your arrows, conveying a strong sense of the depth of the scene they occupy.

Your sausage forms with contour lines are similarly well done - you're sticking close to the characteristics of simple sausages, your contour lines are drawn confidently so as to achieve even shapes and appropriate curvatures that wrap convincingly around the sausage's surfaces, and the degree you've chosen shows consideration of the orientation in space of each of the cross-sectional slices. My only concerns relate to the ellipses at the tips of the sausages, which you appear to be applying to all of the ends of your sausages, instead of just to the ones intended to turn towards the viewer as explained here. Also, don't forget to draw through them two full times before lifting your pen, which is required for all of the ellipses we freehand, including the smaller ones.

Continuing onto the texture section, one thing to keep in mind is that the concepts we introduce relating to texture rely on skills our students generally don't have right now - because they're the skills this entire course is designed to develop. That is, spatial reasoning. Understanding how the textural forms sit on a given surface, and how they relate to the surfaces around them (which is necessary to design the shadow they would cast) is a matter of understanding 3D spatial relationships. The reason we introduce it here is to provide context and direction for what we'll explore later - similarly to the rotated boxes/organic perspective boxes in Lesson 1 introducing a problem we engage with more thoroughly in the box challenge. Ultimately my concern right now is just how closely you're adhering to the underlying steps and procedure we prescribe (especially those in these reminders).

I'm very pleased to see that you've leaned into this approach quite a bit, with lots of great examples of intentionally designed and outlined shadow shapes, approached in this two-step manner, as well as clear signs that you've been patient and attentive when observing your references. One thing I do want to recommend however is that as you engage with textural problems throughout the rest of the course, that you try to use this two-step process of designing/outlining your shadow shapes before filling them in to the exclusion of all others, rather than as one tool in your belt alongside less controlled approaches like one-off strokes. While it's true that there are certainly going to be shadows that are cast that are so small they can't reasonably be executed using our two step methodology, in such cases it's better to actually leave them out, for the following reasons:

• A designed shape, despite not being something we can create quite as small as a one-off stroke, tapers in a more nuanced, delicate fashion, whereas a one-off stroke is more likely to end in a manner that feels more sudden. Thus, the shapes lean better into our goal of creating a gradient that transitions from black to white (and ultimately we have to pick a point for the shadows to drop off altogether anyway, so pushing a little farther with singular strokes isn't strictly necessary).

• Drawing in one-off strokes allows us to lean more into drawing directly from observation (as opposed to observing, understanding the forms that we see as they exist in 3D space, then creating shadows based on that understanding), which can be very tempting as it can allow us to create more visually pleasing things without all of the extra baggage of thinking in 3D. But of course, 3D spatial reasoning is the purpose of this course.

Moving onto the form intersections, this exercise serves two main purposes:

• Similarly to the textures, it introduces the problem of the intersection lines themselves, which students are not expected to understand how to apply successfully, but rather just make an attempt at - this will continue to be developed from lessons 3-7, and this exercise will return in the homework in lessons 6 and 7 for additional analysis, and advice where it is deemed to be necessary). As it stands the manner in which you're tackling your intersection lines does clearly show that you're thinking about how the forms relate to one another in 3D space. That said, since I did notice a few spots where you were drawing "through" your intersections, I did want to recommend against this. While drawing through forms is very beneficial to our understanding of how those forms sit in 3D space, while only minimally increasing the complexity of the task, drawing through intersections (aside from cases where we draw wa full ellipse to help get that curvature correct, which is fine) tends to increase the complexity to a distracting degree, while only providing minimal benefits.

• The other, far more important use of this exercise (at least in the context of this stage in the course) is that it is essentially a combination of everything we've introduced thus far. The principles of linework, the use of the ghosting method, the concepts surrounding ellipses along with their axes/degrees, perspective, foreshortening, convergence, the Y method, and so forth - all of it is present in this exercise. Where we've already confirmed your general grasp of these concepts in isolation in previous exercises, it is in presenting it all together that can really challenge a student's patience and discipline, and so it allows us to catch any issues that might interfere with their ability to continue forward as meaningfully as we intend.

As for this latter point, you're generally doing a good job of applying the methodologies from earlier in the course, although there are definitely a few spots where you're forgetting to apply the ghosting method in its entirety (as we see here), forgetting to draw through ellipses two full times before lifting your pen (here), forgetting to draw through boxes (here) and forgetting to construct cylinders around minor axes (as we see here). This suggests that you are prone to working on auto-pilot, rather than ensuring that the choices you make are the result of conscious decisions - which is important to work towards our goal of training a reliable auto-pilot that can be leveraged for our own drawings outside of this course. Of course, training an auto-pilot by leveraging that auto-pilot tends not to be very productive.

I also have two additional reminders to share:

• Make sure that you're applying line weight as described here in Lesson 1 - right now you appear to be applying it more arbitrarily, rather than in the consistent and purposeful manner described there, which should be adhered to within the bounds of this course.

• You didn't do this throughout, but I did notice some spots that suggested I should mention this - be sure not to ever default to drawing the side edges of your cylinders as being parallel on the page, as this would only occur if your intent is for that cylinder to run perpendicular to the viewer's angle of sight (since that's the circumstance that would push the side edges' VP to infinity, as discussed in Lesson 1). If that is not your intent - and in this exercise where we're rotating our forms arbitrarily in space, it wouldn't be - be sure to always include some minimal amount of visible convergence.

Lastly, your organic forms with contour lines are coming along well - you're clearly demonstrating that you're thinking about how these forms slump and sag over one another under the influence of gravity. Do however keep in mind that cast shadows and line weight are not the same thing - it's easy to conflate the two and even blend them together (as we see here), transitioning from one to the other, but they follow different rules and serve different purposes. Line weight must be kept subtle and focused on clarifying overlaps between different lines, but runs along the silhouettes of forms. Cast shadows must have a surface to be cast upon (and thus can't just cling to the silhouette of a form, floating in 3D space) but can be drawn much larger and bolder.

All in all you're progressing well, and the points I've raised here can continue to be addressed in your warmups, so I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete.

Jumping right in with the arrows, here while I can see a general push towards focusing on how the arrows flow through space, the slight hesitation with which those side edges are being drawn does undermine the flow a bit. Remember - even though you're going to be afraid of making mistakes in regards to accuracy, you want to keep making the conscious choice to prioritize the confidence of a stroke over its accuracy, and so any slight hesitation needs to be ignored. Easier said than done of course, but intent is important.

To be clear though, the hesitation isn't very significant, but it's at this "close enough" range where that intent makes all the difference - so make sure you're leaning into smooth, confident sweeps of your whole arm, as shown in the video (where I've got a multi-camera set up to show it from different angles).

Aside from that, you're doing a great job in terms of applying a generous size differential for the application of foreshortening to the positive space of your arrows, although when it comes to the negative space this is an area that will benefit from more attention. There are some cases where the gaps between the zigzagging sections appropriately compress the further back we look (as we see in these two), but there are many more where the gaps are either more consistent, or where you're not really following the kind of zigzagging S-curve path that would emphasize this aspect, so try to lean into that in the future.

Looking at your sausage forms with contour lines,

• I can see that you're generally sticking to the characteristics of simple sausages - though again that same hesitation does slightly undermine the solidity of the resulting forms.

• Most of your contour lines tend to be more confident, resulting in more even elliptical shapes and curves that wrap convincingly around the sausage form's surface, although do make sure that you're rotating your page (as part of the ghosting method's planning phase) to find a comfortable angle of approach - I noticed that at certain angles you tend to hesitate more.

• It appears that when it comes to the degree of your contour lines, these are being chosen somewhat arbitrarily at times. Prior to our recent update of the first section of Lesson 2's video/demo material, we relied more heavily on this being explained in Lesson 1's ellipses section, but with the update we made a point of addressing it more directly (both in the video and here in the written material), so those are worth a look. I'd also recommend paying attention to the portion about the ellipses we place on the ends of our sausages to ensure those are being employed correctly, as I do see a number of places where there are contradictions (like here, where the preceding contour curves tell us this end of the sausage is turned away from the viewer, while the ellipse tells us that this end is turned towards the viewer, since we're able to see the full contour line rather than just a partial curve).

• Also remember to draw through all of your contour ellipses two full times before lifting your pen - you appear to be forgetting that requirement when drawing those smaller ellipses.

Continuing onto the texture section, one thing to keep in mind is that the concepts we introduce relating to texture rely on skills our students generally don't have right now - because they're the skills this entire course is designed to develop. That is, spatial reasoning. Understanding how the textural forms sit on a given surface, and how they relate to the surfaces around them (which is necessary to design the shadow they would cast) is a matter of understanding 3D spatial relationships. The reason we introduce it here is to provide context and direction for what we'll explore later - similarly to the rotated boxes/organic perspective boxes in Lesson 1 introducing a problem we engage with more thoroughly in the box challenge. Ultimately my concern right now is just how closely you're adhering to the underlying steps and procedure we prescribe (especially those in these reminders).

I can see that you definitely have made a good bit of use of this methodology (especially in your texture analyses), which is great to see, and that you are definitely putting a lot of time and patience into observing your reference images. One thing to keep in mind as you continue to tackle textural problems throughout this course is that it is best to try and approach all of your textural marks in this two-step process, to the exclusion of other approaches (including the less controlled/planned one-off strokes that we are always tempted to use). While it's true that there are certainly going to be shadows that are cast that are so small they can't reasonably be executed using our two step methodology, in such cases it's better to actually leave them out, for the following reasons:

• A designed shape, despite not being something we can create quite as small as a one-off stroke, tapers in a more nuanced, delicate fashion, whereas a one-off stroke is more likely to end in a manner that feels more sudden. Thus, the shapes lean better into our goal of creating a gradient that transitions from black to white (and ultimately we have to pick a point for the shadows to drop off altogether anyway, so pushing a little farther with singular strokes isn't strictly necessary).

• Drawing in one-off strokes allows us to lean more into drawing directly from observation (as opposed to observing, understanding the forms that we see as they exist in 3D space, then creating shadows based on that understanding), which can be very tempting as it can allow us to create more visually pleasing things without all of the extra baggage of thinking in 3D. But of course, 3D spatial reasoning is the purpose of this course.

Moving onto the form intersections, this exercise serves two main purposes:

• Similarly to the textures, it introduces the problem of the intersection lines themselves, which students are not expected to understand how to apply successfully, but rather just make an attempt at - this will continue to be developed from lessons 3-7, and this exercise will return in the homework in lessons 6 and 7 for additional analysis, and advice where it is deemed to be necessary). As it stands the way you're approaching drawing your intersection lines clearly shows that you're thinking about the relationships between these forms as they sit in 3D space, which is exactly what we hope to see. One recommendation though - don't worry about the intersections (or parts of intersections) that sit on the opposite side of a form, blocked from view by it. Just focus on the visible portions.

• The other, far more important use of this exercise (at least in the context of this stage in the course) is that it is essentially a combination of everything we've introduced thus far. The principles of linework, the use of the ghosting method, the concepts surrounding ellipses along with their axes/degrees, perspective, foreshortening, convergence, the Y method, and so forth - all of it is present in this exercise. Where we've already confirmed your general grasp of these concepts in isolation in previous exercises, it is in presenting it all together that can really challenge a student's patience and discipline, and so it allows us to catch any issues that might interfere with their ability to continue forward as meaningfully as we intend.

In this latter point, your work does have some issues, primarily in terms of you remembering to apply some of what is required of students throughout the course, including drawing through all of your freehanded ellipses two full times, there's one box you forgot to draw through which isn't a huge deal but still worth noting, and while I can see you leaning more into the Y method and the negotiation of corners/ghosting for your boxes, many other lines lack the usual signs that you're going through the planning phase of the ghosting method. There's definitely also cases where lines are again more hesitant (as we see here), which suggests that you may be forgetting to ensure that once you hit the execution phase of the ghosting method, any opportunity to improve the resulting accuracy has passed, and you must consciously commit to the motion you've practiced, regardless of how it turns out.

Lastly, your organic intersections clearly demonstrate that you are thinking about how these forms slump and sag over one another, and you're making good use of cast shadows to emphasize those relationships.

All in all you are progressing decently, although it is important that you consciously lean more into the confident execution of your marks, and into applying all of the methodologies and strategies introduced throughout the course so far. I'll be assigning some limited revisions to address more notable concerns - you'll find them listed below.

Yup your images came through just fine this time! And your work is way better - phenomenal really. You've shown a great deal of care and patience in applying the information from your orthographic plans (which show clear intent in how you're using those subdivisions to break down the object you're constructing) and as a result, your constructions have come out very structurally solid, while maintaining a great deal of detail.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson - and the course as a whole - as complete. Congratulations, you definitely earned it!

Not particularly. I would much sooner have a child spend their time focusing on drawing as play (what's described here), so they can develop a healthy relationship with the act of creating, and drawing as a whole, with as little emphasis placed on the end results they produce. They should be encouraged to draw without fear, and celebrated not for how things turn out, but the boldness with which they explored their ideas.

Technical skill doesn't take that long to develop - a year, maybe two, which is a drop in the bucket and can be addressed later on. But what most of our students struggle with most is the unhealthy mindset formed by years of valuing only results, of competition, of setting arbitrary standards with no grasp of what is reasonable or unreasonable to expect of themselves, and of comparisons with others.

Since Drawabox focuses primarily on technical skill, it isn't really suited to what a child should be focusing on.

Oh sorry about that - I'd caught your question, then while dealing with the initial bit, it entirely slipped my mind.

Mistakes should be left to stand for themselves. When you correct a mistake, it tricks the brain into thinking the cause of the issue has been addressed, making it no more likely that you'll take additional time to think through your choices beforehand. Not all mistakes are the result of rushing through the steps in some fashion, but correcting them doesn't provide any benefit for the other cases either.

These are definitely more in line with the instructions. One thing I do want to recommend however is that make a point of ensuring that your boxes' sets of edges are actually converging (rather than running visibly parallel to one another). Remember that as discussed in Lesson 1, a VP is only pushed to infinity in the case that its set of edges are intended to run perpendicular to the viewer's angle of sight. This can't happen on all three axes, and furthermore, if you aren't explicitly intending to have the box be oriented specifically in that way (and since in this exercise we're rotating our boxes arbitrarily in space, that should not be your intent), then you should always include at the very least some minimal amount of visible convergence.

You can also refer to this section explaining why "0 point perspective" (where all 3 VPs are pushed to infinity) doesn't exist.

I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete.

These are moving in the right direction, and your cylinders generally look more correct - although this one suggests that you may want to review the section from my original feedback about not drawing those side edges as being parallel on the page:

Don't default to drawing the side edges as though they're parallel on the page. This would only be the case if the intent is to draw a cylinder that is oriented perpendicularly to the viewer's angle of sight, as those are the conditions that would result in the side edges' vanishing point being pushed to infinity (as discussed back in Lesson 1). If this is not your intent - and in this exercise, since we're rotating our forms randomly in space, it wouldn't be - then you should always include some minimal amount of visible convergence to those side edges.

Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete.

The album you linked appears only to include one image (your moped reference), so something must have gone wrong. Either way, it's probably better that you use the image uploader beneath the reply box (as pictured here: https://drawabox.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/user_uploads/3HGALLJF_tc10wsdz.jpg).

Jumping right in with the structural aspect of the challenge, you've done a great job of using your ellipse guides to flesh out the entirety of your wheel's structure (using several ellipses/curves to control how the structure tapers towards the sides to give it that sense of being inflated, and that it'd land with a bounce rather than a heavy thud, where appropriate). I can also see you've been quite patient and mindful as you constructed the rims and the spoke structures therein. When working as small as the master ellipse templates requires (due to their limitations), it can be easy to end up rushing the smaller marks, but it's clear that you've given each one its due, and it really shows.

When it comes to the textural aspect of this challenge, this is where it is revealed to be something of an intentional trap - although one you've weathered fairly well. When it comes to texture, it's very common for students to make it clear that it has indeed been quite some time since they last reviewed the concepts discussed in Lesson 2, relating to implicit markmaking, the focus on cast shadows, and so forth. Many students end up trying to engage with texture in whatever way seems natural, which usually involves some manner of explicit markmaking, whether outlining each textural form, or working in some manner more with form shading than cast shadows, and so this challenge ends up serving as a bit of a rude reminder that there may be sections earlier in the course that should be reviewed.

In your case, I think you've definitely shown a greater overall awareness of the importance of not simply drawing every little form in its entirety, and instead finding a way to limit just how much ink we put down while conveying the texture in its entirety. Examples like 13 and 18 are especially good examples of this, as we see here. While to my eye it does appear that the marks you're adding may be closer to form shading (where we make certain planes of a form darker or lighter based on how much they're turned to face towards or away from a light source) rather than cast shadows (where there is a form casting the shadow, and surrounding surfaces that receive it, with the specific shape of the shadow and the way it is designed directly describing the spatial relationship between that form and those surfaces), you are much closer than most, to the point that it's certainly possible that I might be misinterpreting your intent.

The difference can really be subtle, and as I'll elaborate upon at the end of this critique, at times the result can be largely identical (with the important difference being in how we're thinking about the problem, in terms of the exercise itself being what matters, rather than the result it produces).

To illustrate what I mean by the difference being subtle, I want to share with you some feedback I provided another student nearly 4 years ago, with an example from their work and the explanation I provided them:

In the top, we've got the structural outlines for the given form - of course, since we want to work implicitly, we cannot use outlines. In the second row, we've got two options for conveying that textural form through the use of filled black shapes. On the left, they fill in the side planes, placing those shapes on the surface of the form itself, and actually filling in areas that are already enclosed and defined on the form and leaving its "top" face empty. This would be incorrect, more similar to form shading and not a cast shadow. On the right, we have an actual cast shadow - they look similar, but the key point to pay attention to is shown in the third row - it is the actual silhouette of the form itself which is implied. We've removed all of the internal edges of the form, and so while it looks kind of like the top face, but if you look more closely, it has certain subtle elements that are much more nuanced - instead of just using purely horizontal and vertical edges, we have some diagonals that come from the edges of the textural form that exist in the "depth" dimension of space (so if your horizontals were X and your verticals were Y, those diagonals come from that which exists in the Z dimension).

Anyway - all in all, you are very much headed in the right direction with this, but try and continue to think about how the marks you're drawing, and the shapes they're given, should be cast shadows (aside from where they break the silhouette of the larger object, in which case you can certainly outline that portion). In cases where the mark you make feels like it's limited to filling in an existing plane (like the side of a textural form), then take a step back and think through what you're doing, as it's likely that you might be falling back to form shading.

And lastly: when it comes to those tires with shallow grooves, or really any texture consisting of holes, cracks, etc. it's very common for us to view these named things (the grooves, the cracks, etc.) as being the textural forms in question - but of course they're not forms at all. They're empty, negative space, and it's the structures that surround these empty spaces that are the actual forms for us to consider when designing the shadows they'll cast. This is demonstrated in this diagram. This doesn't always actually result in a different result at the end of the day, but as these are all exercises, how we think about them and how we come to that result is just as important - if not moreso.

So! To summarize, you're doing much better than most, and I can clearly see that you are attempting to apply the concepts from Lesson 2. There may be some adjustment in how you go about it which may be merited, but all in all, I'm not at all concerned with what I'm seeing. And for what it's worth, even those who do fall into the "trap" still have the challenge marked as complete, as that aspect of it is only intended to be a bit of a wake-up call.

I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Keep up the great work.