Jumping right in, I can see that you've made a concerted effort to explore texture with the use of larger, filled areas of solid black, instead of focusing solely on line as you did in the wheel challenge. That said, I do have a number of suggestions and things to point out that should help you continue to get the most out of this exercise going forward.

So from the feedback I provided in your 25 wheel challenge, there's a few main points we'll be referencing here:

• In this course, we exclusively use implicit markmaking to convey textural information

• Implicit markmaking involves conveying the presence of a form and how it relates to the surfaces around it through the shape of the shadows it casts on those surrounding surfaces - the textural form itself isn't drawn at all, although the way other forms' shadows may wrap around its surface can be served to further convey the nature of that form.

• In order to successfully apply these cast shadows, we have to think about how each textural form sits in 3D space, and consider how they relate to one another. This means that, as discussed in these reminders, we can't simply try to observe the shadows that are present in our reference image and transfer them directly to our drawing - we have to consider what we're observing tells us about how the forms in question sit in space and relate to their surroundings, and then design our own cast shadows that reflect that understanding.

• As also mentioned in those reminders, the best way to ensure that you're consistently doing that is to apply all of your cast shadows (meaning all of your textural marks) with a two-step process of first outling/designing the intended shadow shape, then filling it in, rather than jumping straight to drawing the mark in one go. When we draw those marks directly, this allows us to very easily slip into putting marks down based on observation, rather than understanding.

So to start with that last point, you certainly do jump back and forth between producing large, more intentionally designed shadow shapes, as well as putting down individual marks more akin to defining the outlines/boundaries of individual forms (as we see here on the weaving texture). When engaging with texture in the way we do in this course (so whether as homework for the course, or when intending to apply these exercises in the way we've introduced them), I would strongly recommend sticking to this two-step methodology 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.

Next, it helps to keep in mind which direction your shadows are being cast. The way this exercise - that is, the texture analysis exercise - is set up, we've got a light source positioned on the far right, and the closer we get to this light source the more the shadows get blasted away (eventually leading to the solid white bar on that far right edge of the gradient), and conversely the closer we get to the far left, the deeper and larger those shadows become. As shown in this diagram, depending on how far the form is from the light source, the angle of the light rays will hit the object at shallower angles the farther away they are, resulting in the shadow itself being projected farther. This, and more broadly the direction our shadows are being cast, is critical to allowing us to create this sort of gradient.

In situations where the positioning of the light source to the far right (and therefore all of our shadows being cast to the left) is forgotten, this can cause issues. Here in your pineapple skin texture, we have such a case - the shadows are cast to the right side of the forms casting them, which functionally limits how much your cast shadows can come together towards the left, and eventually blend into that solid black bar.

That solid black bar is another point worth discussing - while you do blend your textures into it a little bit, it's only in the very end of the gradient - you may want to play with spreading that sudden transition to full black across the entire gradient. This will likely result in a lot of your textures not being as identifiable as they are now, but making identifiable textures isn't really the purpose of the exercise. It's about forcing your brain to think about the relationships between different forms as they exist together at small scales.

Anyway, hopefully I've given you some more actionable steps you can apply mindfully and consciously when approaching this kind of exercise in the future. Note that the most important of these is actively avoiding working with one-off strokes/lines, and always approaching your textural marks in a two-step process of outlining/designing shadow shapes, then filling them in. It'll be very time consuming and difficult, but it'll also help you avoid some of the very tempting ways we can derail ourselves from the main focus of the exercise.

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