Max Evolution (Patreon)

 What's this? It's not Wednesday! But I'm still drawing and I wanted to share this anyway! I might be crazy, but I think there's a couple of people watching me currently who enjoy seeing this kind of post. (I'm definitely crazy)

I've shown a bit before about how I've started to refine my sketches though, and this (which is going in Chapter 3) just so happened to be a perfect example of it. Starting in the top-left, I draw the roughest, quickest form of the expression I think I want. Then, I blank it out and try a couple of other different things to see if I like them better.

This time, I was most satisfied with the original general positioning, and how it looked on the page with the other sketches, so I went back to that and tried to refine it from there... a few times. That's the three drawings in the middle row. All were to my dissatisfaction. For various reasons, he just looked wrong, and I couldn't fix it. So in the end, I returned to a blank canvas and drew that cutie in the bottom from scratch that I'm REALLY happy with! Max is supposed to be adorable! My amateur art skills aren't always doing him fair justice.

Fact is, I think all the sketches leading up to that final sketch at the bottom are an important part of the process. Whether I use them as a guide and draw over them or wipe them out and start over from scratch, I think each one helps to lead up to the final sketch. Each time I make a mistake and start over, I am either consciously or subconsciously aware of the mistake, it seems. And each sketch I don't use still has things about it I like, lines, curves, details that fall out of my pen that I want to keep. Tiny things I can repurpose in the final art while I'm working to try and fix the glaring problems that bother me with the overall composition.

Anyway, just wanted to share some art while I'm trying to wrap up Chapter 3. I've got another... probably, five? pages to finish and then I'll release the chapter from Early Access. Hope you are all having a wonderful winter!