My Art Evolution (2005- 2017) and Advice to Budding Artists

I suppose since it's the new year, the most fitting thing would be to post about personal improvement, as much as I want to get into some other things here. I like to use this one character to show my progress because she's the one with the most drawings overall which gives her a "time capsule" effect.

I'm not 100% on which year this was made in, but I'm pretty sure it was 2005, when I was 15. It was my first digital artwork attempt, previously I simply used pencils. This was drawn with a mouse at the time. You can see an obvious lack of anatomical understanding, and muddy, colour-theory-less, shading. :-)

The next attempt was in 2011, at 21 years old. At this time a painter friend who coloured lineart for me told me about shifting hues when you shade, so this was the very start of applying myself to colour theory.

A year later in 2012 I tried again. By this point my understanding of colour had gotten much better, though still not perfect. I used a pose stock as reference, which has since been deleted. It was by Tasastock @ Deviantart. Anatomy and perspective was still a huge flaw, and I wasn't putting much thought into poses or composition.

A few years later in 2015 I made a character profile sheet for her in which I finally applied myself more to proper outfit design. Anatomy is much stronger now, though still not quite refined. At this point in my life however, I realized I was taking art far too lightly if I really wanted to make comics and started studying and observing much harder. I feel like I only truly made the strides I did in 2017 because of the mentality shift I had at this point. I had met my partner at this point and we started piecing her story together as something more serious, and we both agreed on changing hair/ eye colours of any characters I had to natural ones.

2016 marks the year that I really started finding my own style, and breaking away from my artist friend's influences who were going in a semi realistic painting direction. I really felt like this cartoon style is inherently me, and I found that I don't enjoy painting. I will do it, especially for backgrounds, but "drawing" is more my thing. As well as I enjoy the challenge of creating 3-D form with limited techniques like cel-shading and black and white. This ended up becoming a frustrating realization however, as I would find out that some artists look down upon these styles as if they're "lazy" or an "avoidance" of not knowing how to paint, even within the anime/ manga/ cartoon communities themselves.

In 2017 I made further improvements/ style changes. Trying to branch out into more realism with my figures (as much as you can put in a cartoon, anyway), I decided to add more subtle features like cheekbones because I want as many small things as I can to visually distinguish characters from each other. I was originally inspired by the show Naruto, as I was enamored with Masashi Kishimoto's ability to make unique and distinguished characters within manga. I wanted to take his "blueprints" for style and take it even further though to really play with more facial features and variances. By this point in my journey I feel like I have a much more solid grasp on colour, and need to polish anatomy, perspective and design skills more.

My very final image of this character this year, started from this sketch. My biggest flaw that still plagues me is stiffness. After all the studying of human anatomy but not much application thereof in dynamic or perspective, it has lead to very lifeless and stiff figures. My focus in 2018 is to relax some rules for anatomy and focus more on flow and a more "comic" type take on illustrations. Try to go back to my roots of drawing from imagination, not that I wasn't before, but finding a better balance between drawing for fun and drawing to improve.

If I had any advice to young artists (in the sense of just starting your journey), it would be a couple things that I found most important. First of all, don't take art too lightly, or too seriously. Don't make studying a chore, if you don't want to draw something, don't draw it. However do try to find ways to incorporate challenging yourself within the pictures you do find joy in. Sticking to your comfort zone will only make tiny incremental improvements over time. The artists who make careers out of painting the same portraits still had to challenge themselves with many different subjects and techniques to get to that point. Also know that drawing only from photos (references) can become a comfort zone too, try to work from your imagination as well to put together a composition to actually apply what you learn. And vice versa, if you don't do any studies as well.

Secondly, the most important skill you have that overall determines your ability to draw is your eye for observation. It's not your pens, not your paper, not your subjects. Your ability to properly observe what you see in front of you is what translates to the illusion of light, form, shape etc. Don't get frustrated if things aren't turning out the way you want. Simply spend more time observing the world around you in closer detail. Pay attention to what colours the shadows on pavement are. Look at how light in a room bounces around and catches on various objects, and what angles they do so at. Try to pick out exactly what it is that makes everyone look different from another. And most importantly, get as many influences as you can. Expand your horizons and learn to appreciate the skills and techniques of every style. :-)