As with all things in Drawabox, there is no such thing as too long - and frankly, while it definitely would have been good to complete them alongside the other lessons, the reason for this is specifically so students wouldn't end up just grinding them all out in the course of a week. So, in that regard, taking 3 months as you did here achieved a similar result.

Now, I'm assuming that they're in chronological order. I think that because you tackled these much later in your progress, you started off with a pretty strong understanding of 3D space to begin with - which, as you probably recognized, is just as important with this exercise as it is for the rest of the course. It's just at a much smaller scale. You're asked to hold your understanding of a given textural form in your head, and to understand its relationship with its surroundings, before actually drawing the shadow it would cast. Doing so later on definitely gave you a great advantage in terms of completing the exercise, but it definitely started you further along - so the overall improvement over the course of the set is not as obvious as it might be for someone who started right after lesson 2.

That's completely natural though. As our skills overall improve, it takes more time and work to keep pushing them forwards.

It's pretty obvious that in the first direct study (the square on the left side), you weren't entirely sure what to draw with that, and you ended up falling more to somewhat symbolic elements rather than observing as directly. You picked up on that mistake very quickly however, and in your textural gradient for the same one, you clearly put much more time into observing your reference and identifying the nature of the forms that were there.

The overall trend going through your set is certainly good, and throughout most of them you're demonstrating all the right areas of focus, but I think the best way to critique the remainder is to pick on a few that are particularly interesting or noteworthy.

Looking at your fabric cloth texture, I can see what you were dealing with and why you took the approach you did - but this one didn't come out all that well. You definitely nailed the major structures (the folds themselves), but when it came time to reach for some of the smaller elements to create the subtler transitions, you ended up focusing on the pattern you saw in your reference, rather than thinking about the nature of the forms that produced it.

It all comes down to the forms, every time. Fabric is made up of threads that twist and intertwine and layer upon one another - so it's still the threads themselves that are casting the little shadows. There's no way here to end up with lines that just flow in one direction, because there's no way for that fabric to hold together. Instead, you need crisscrossing threads to create a structure that holds together.

That doesn't mean you need to be hatching lines in different directions - rather, that it's the threads that criss-cross, and therefore the shadows are going to be falling in the pockets between those threads. So instead of shadows following along the length of the threads, you're going to end up with a lot of little shadows - just dots, effectively - that gradually merge together to create larger swathes of shadow.

Take a look at this image for instance - notice how the pockets themselves are all broken up from one another. While different weaves of fabric will feature different patterns, at their core it is this kind of structure that allows it to hold together.

Another texture I wanted to quickly note was the ice cream. The issue is similar - here you were focusing on creating some kind of pattern, and in doing so you drifted away from the core principle of focusing on the 3D forms, and how each shadow shape is the result of that 3D structure. It's easy to fall into the pattern of simply filling in spaces, creating arbitrary shapes, especially when we venture into particularly challenging or abnormal cases. With ice cream, focus on how it creates ridges, and how one "layer" of ice cream will fold back over another, casting its shadow upon that underlying surface. Also focus on the little holes that form in the top layer of ice cream, allowing us to see a little deeper, and consider the shadows that would be cast into such perforations.

Now, all that said, you have a ton of textures here that are doing everything right. The candle texture for instance, focuses on the forms that drip down in wax. While I felt this one ended up looking a lot more like bark, the fact is that you did focus on cast shadows. It was just a matter of the kinds of forms you interpreted were much rougher, rather than he kind of smooth, soft curves of liquid wax. At its core though, this was still well done. The obsidian crystal, gravel, and forest floor leaves were all similarly well done, with a focus on shadow shapes rather than arbitrary patterns.

So, all in all, I think you've got plenty here that is pushing in the right direction, and just need to remind yourself to always focus on those forms as you move forwards. I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. I guess you're officially finished with all I have to offer now! Congratulations once again!