While doing the last few textures I have realised that basically iam designing the shadow shapes to define the form of objects.

That is exactly right! Since our textural forms tend to rest directly on the surface of the object, the shadow cast exists right up against the form itself, and so on that side of the shadow, we're establishing information that helps define the form itself. Then, through the rest of the cast shadow's shape, we're defining the relationship between it and the surface upon which the shadow is cast. All of the control of the information we're conveying falls to the design of that shadow shape, and so to make it, we have to consider how the form sits in space, and how it relates to the surfaces around it.

That does however speak to why, contrary to your assertion, finding references isn't actually inherently hard for this challenge - what makes it hard tends to come from students' desire to find photos that look down on the textured surfaces from an angle similar to what we're ultimately depicting in our gradient - a sort of top down view. But in truth, because we're not drawing our textures from observation directly (but rather observing them to understand the 3D information presented, and then leveraging that 3D information according to our own purposes and needs (as stressed in these reminders.

This diagram may help to demonstrate this point. It's actually one I keep on hand, with the explanation below, to step through the texture analysis process in general but it's pertinent to the discussion here since the photo isn't top-down, but rather a much more normal shot unrelated to highlighting the texture we're interested in. Here's the breakdown of what's shown:

• First in the traceover of the reference image, we're identifying the kinds of forms that are present and how they vary/how they're similar.

• Then in the first rectangle labeled "the forms we're transferring" this is more of an idea of how we would, in our heads, think about arranging those textural forms on our surface based on what we saw in the reference.

• Next in the rectangle labeled "how we're thinking about the cast shadows" are the actual lines we'd be drawing to design those cast shadow shapes, based on our understanding of the relationship between each textural form and the surfaces around it. The forms from the previous step are faded out here, because again - they weren't drawn. This is definitely the most challenging part, because working implicitly requires us to think about multiple forms simultaneously without drawing them - though not all at once, more a small handful including the one whose shadow you wish to design, and those whose surfaces that shadow might touch.

• And finally, we'd fill in those shadow shapes.

• Once the shadow shapes are in, while we can't take away from them (since we're working in ink), we can add to them to extend our cast shadows as needed to adjust and push the gradient.

Now, much of that process should be entirely familiar to you, for the simple reason that you've done a phenomenal job of sticking to the focus on cast shadows throughout your work on this challenge. You mention that it really only started to click that the cast shadows directly describe the textural forms, and while that may indeed be the case, you were applying those concepts right from the beginning and to great effect. It's actually extremely normal for students to struggle with this right through to the end of the challenge and beyond (as with all the homework we assign, it's really just a body of work to help guide us in determining what advice/feedback to provide), so it's quite remarkable to see you adhering to it so strongly from the beginning.

There are still certainly spots where you break away from the methodology outlined in those reminders (you'll use the approach of outlining intended shadow shapes, then filling them in, through the vast majority of the process but there are still more one-off strokes when you get far to the sparse end of the gradient. I completely understand the reasoning behind the shift, but I still strongly encourage you to stick to the methodology all the way through. You will inevitably hit a point where the mark you want to make is so thin and delicate that the approach doesn't allow you to make it as you wish - but ultimately that's simply the point at which you have to decide whether the mark should be made at all, or if that's where the shadow should be left out altogether.

That approach has two main benefits - it allows us to control the design of the shadow very specifically, and it also allows us to create those tapered points in our shape that allow us to seamlessly transition into having no shadow shapes at all (whereas the taper of a singular stroke is - if you're still using the same 0.5mm fineliner, and I suspect you may have switched out for something thinner at certain points - going to have a limit to just how thin and delicate it can get.

Anyway! As a whole, phenomenal work, and I'm very pleased to hear that the subconscious grasp of the concepts you've held through the whole thing did bubble up towards conscious understanding of the logic behind our choices here.

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