Hey,

Sorry for the long rant, I don't even really expect you to read it all. This is more for me to get my frustration out.

Thanks for the feedback, as always, it does seem like you genuinely want to explain all the main laps in my understanding, as per what my work shows. However, this time, I will confess that I understand way less about textures than you might expect. This topic has been with me since June, I've spent more time on this than I did on any other lesson - more than most of them combined probably. I read and reread and watched and rewatched all the materials like 15 times, went through 10ths of feedbacks given to other students and analyzed their works in extreme detail. I even got a huge extra explanation after lesson 2, which I read enough to quote in my sleep by now. I discussed it with some members of the community on discord after many attempts to understand it myself and changed my approach to thinking about this exercise several times. But each time, I actually 'get it' less and less. The results of what I produce might not show it, but as far as what is going on in my head while doing these textures, it all made less sense by the end of the challenge, than it did at the beginning.

I initially thought it was quite simple. This is how I thought about and visualized these textures: Textures are just a bunch of simple, tiny forms, laid flat in a pattern (not always a regular one, but each with some internal logic to the way it spreads these shapes around). These shapes exist in a 3D space and have height, width and depth. They cast shadows, which correspond to their shape and the surface they are cast onto. All I have to do is draw just the drop shadows they cast and ignore their outlines, local value and shading.

However, the first step in each texture is doing a detailed study of the reference image. That is (to my understanding at the time), look at all the drop shadows and transfer them to the page. This, of course, creates a bunch of random marks in a square that look nothing like the reference. I always thought that the result doesn't matter (draw-a-box exercises after all are not about making pretty images) and that this part is there just to make me look at the texture in extreme detail, to help identify the 'simple forms' and their patterns. So that is what I would do, while making notes about the things I observe. Then I would move to the third rectangle and draw these shadows, getting longer on the left and smaller/shorter on the right, with some smaller forms not casting any shadows at all, the closer to the light source they got. This, of course, created a bunch of random marks on the page that looked nothing like the reference, or what this texture, in these lighting conditions, would look like in real life. This again, didn't worry me too much, since I followed the instructions and making pretty images is not the point here. I hated doing this, but I felt like at least it made some sense.

Then I looked at what other students you gave positive feedback to were doing and I noticed that there was clearly something massively wrong about my approach. Their textures actually looked more like simplified versions of the real images. They often broke all the rules I followed and extended or out right added extra shadow shapes where they had no right being. They also removed others that should be there, but would probably make the picture messy. The way they did studies in the first square, looked more like distillations of all the details in the texture and simplification to a nice and readable design, that was maybe vaguely based on the drop shadow shapes, but did not follow it literally. Now, the word 'design' is used all over the texture materials and even this feedback, but it is never actually explained what it means. I still don't really know how to understand it, let alone apply it’s principles, since I don't know what they might be. But I’ll get to that later.

Comparing my work to others, made me think that this exercise is more about conveying the impression of the texture as a whole and that focusing on drop shadows is the most important part of the process, but that I'm suppose to 'design' (again, I don't' know what that means still) the image as a whole, so that the forms can be clearly defined and texture readable. In order to do that, I deliberately tried to exaggerate certain parts of the texture and ignore others. This produced - as you very aptly noticed - such textures as the brick or ice cream, though fur was the first one of those, if I remember correctly. The reason I added some form shading to the corn, was that I thought it would help define the round shape of it, which drop shadows would make much less readable. It didn't sit right with me at first, but looking at the result, it was pretty obvious that it's meant to be corn, so I thought I'm doing something right.

Couresly, the feather texture was still done with the mind set that it's all about drop shadows. The reason they all have an outline, is that in the reference I used, tips were slightly curved up along the entire border, so these lines that look like outlines, are actually shadow shapes. I knew what it looked like and I expected to get the feedback I got for it. It was actually the main reason I switched my approach - because in some textures, shadows outlined shapes in a way that looked like explicit marks. Every texture with deep crevices had that problem, like the tires, which had such small and deep indents, that they looked the same no matter their distance to the light source. There were many textures I avoided because of that, which also didn't sit right with me.

The funniest one might be the soapy water, which I will maintain is actually correct. In the reference, the bubbles protruded out of the surface, yes. But they were transparent and would not create any shadows. The shadows I drew were actually the result of the holes, said bubbles created in the dense soap. That is why the biggest shapes are round circles, as opposed to the elongated dome like shapes the protruding bubbles would create. I point this out not to defend my work (believe me, I think you were kinder than I deserve), but to showcase how drawing only drop shadows often makes textures impossible to read. This is one example where I know you misunderstood my intentions, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were other similar cases which you simply did not point out, but incorrectly noted as mistakes. Not that I blame you, as I wrote earlier, homeworks you complemented the most, tend to look like pretty, stylised simplifications of the reference, meaning they are not accurate to the drop shadows 100%, which this texture pretty much is. It's just that these don't look readable, so I would get fooled too if I didn't know what the reference looked like.

Anyway, to cut this whole manifesto short, here is what I struggle to understand the most. I filled in the cast shadow shapes in this image and below I circled all the differences between the actual shapes and the final 'design'. All the differences are very small, but they add up. I believe that this step of making pretty much every single shape just a little more readable and adjusting them slightly, as well as adding some more, is what this whole 'design' idea is about and I simply do not get it. I don't even know what I don't know about it. I'm not even sure if it is the missing element that makes these random marks on the page, read as a cohesive texture. Especially since you write that the design step takes place earlier. Hence my confusion increasing, compared to June, which is when I started this nightmare.

After this feedback, my confusion did not decrease. Now I know that feathers and soapy water read as wrong, despite having only cast shadows. At the same time, form shading on the corn was a mistake, despite making the texture more readable. Also, now I know that this exercise is not about getting the impression of the texture as a whole down, if what it takes is making erratic lines. So I can't just put down shadows as they are, I can't add indication with lines, but also not with form shading, I have to 'design' shadows shapes, but I still don't know how... What was all this for?

I'm sorry if my tone sounds bitter, I'm actually laughing while writing this. I went through 5 stages of grief with textures and at this point, I accept the fact that I will just never understand them xD. Unless you read all this and think you can somehow help, but please, do not feel any pressure to. I doubt I’ll touch textures again anytime soon anyway and right now, I’ve got 100 treasure chests waiting for me.