I’ve been working with digital art for so long, I sometimes forget that it’s not quite tangible, not in the same way pencil lines on paper is. I make a mistake, I click “undo” a few times, and it’s like the mistakes have never happened at all. This makes me reckless and clumsy. I also can experiment more, take more risks and push my lines. I can work over the same drawing over and over again.
I take these long breaks from drawing for several reasons. In this case, it started with a flare up of carpal tunnel and my bad back, both problems motivating me to get myself into better shape, pay better attention to my posture and just not be so lazy most of the time.
I’m not all that happy with some a lot of my older work. I thought my Mary Poppins turned out somewhat decently, though (it’s okay to say you like your old art!). I wanted to go back and revisit it, so for last night’s “2 hour drawing”, I finished it up a little bit more by making some minor corrections and painting in a backdrop.
I have noticed one thing I don’t really do, or at least post about: my sketches. This blog, being about my personal art progress, lacks records of me actually practicing. Admittedly, I rounding out my drawings with more finished lines, colour and shading and I like showing off those. I do sketch, but they are more like doodles and to me, it’s kind of embarrassing to show off. See, I’m still comparing myself to every other artist out there.
I’ve finally jumped on this train and opened up shop with both Redbubble and Society6. Maybe I just wanted to see my art on tote bags (because I love tote bags!).
Part of my plans for 2017 is to producing more print-ready artwork, which would force me to refine my work. This is a first step. There will be definitely more incoming.
These are my works of this year. I can probably go over each of these and explain why I like them, and what I’ve learned from working on them, but I still have a bunch of chores to do before ringing in the new year, so I’ll let them speak for themselves.
