Blogging it OLD SCHOOL! I have no idea what that could mean, but it sounds cool so that’s what I’m saying I’m doing.<\/p>\n
On Friday I posted a comparison of a drawing I drew back in March of last year and a picture of the same subject matter drawn three weeks ago. I don’t know about you, but to me the difference was striking. However, I feel I should elaborate a little more on the improvement.<\/p>\n
Back when I first started doing mash-ups, I was more preoccupied with finishing pieces quickly. This resulted in a “good enough” attitude that carried through the first few themes. This started to change with the Wonderland set as I experimented with shading. What I originally intended as a a one time thing, became the standard (not to mention I got better at it). I started being more careful and also tried to find better ways to do things. I think my next big breakthrough was in the Wakfu set when I tried using more fluid brush strokes which helped make my lines seem less “shaky”.<\/p>\n
The new attention to detail meant that I was taking longer to draw each piece. Not coincidentally, my production took a nosedive. I allowed myself to take the time to draw something good instead of worrying if I could churn out a whole set in a week. In ten months of drawing mash-ups in 2012, I drew more than double the amount of pictures I drew in 11 months in 2013, although to be fair, I was drawing almost every night back then, whereas now I mostly only draw on weekends.<\/p>\n
All this to say that while there is definite improvement in my drawing, I was also definitely underachieving when I started. I think a more fair comparison of my actual improvement as an artist is to compare today’s work (say the Steampunk set) with stuff I drew back in August of 2012 (say the Firefly set).<\/p>\n
I will be continuing to revisit some of the themes I covered prior to July 2012 just because they’re my favorite subjects and I’d really like to have some pieces for them that I’m proud of. I may choose a different costume to change things up a little however. For example, in this week’s Star Wars flashback, I chose to use a costume from the Empire Strikes Back instead of the original. Which character did I choose? You’ll have to come back on Friday to see!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"