Weekly Update - 68 (Patreon)

D'aww, he's cute.  Is it okay for me to think my own art is cute?  I don't really know.  On the one hand, I'm proud of what I've drawn here.  On the other, I know I could do better with more practice because it is full of mistakes.  In any case, it's making me happy to see that my art today is way, way way better than my art 3 years ago.

Comic this week:  Yes.  No matter what.  If I have to work through the evenings and into the night I will.

Character Page: Still awaiting more code wizardry, but I think some progress was made on it this weekend.

Max Poster: Needs more flats and shading.

Drawing: The Next Page.  Also... Telegram stickers for my fursona?  I was gonna draw 2 of them, then I made 7 and I want to make more, because they were looking pretty good and going really quickly.

Playing: Deep Rock Galactic.  I can recommend it if you have some friends to play with.  It is a silly game, and loads of fun.

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Weekly Ramble:

I've started to get really afraid of both peaks and plateaus, in regards to art.

As I've been drawing comics, I've noticed my art improving fairly consistently over time.  Some of it is simply from practice.  Some of it happens passively, subconsciously.  I draw a line 1000 times, and of those thousand times, if I'm satisfied with its placement 10 times, my hand starts to learn the precise movements required to execute the gesture to my satisfaction.  It's almost automatic, but eventually I'll be satisfied with the line 100 times out of 1000.

Some of it happens actively, as I look at other people's art or pay special close attention to reference drawings and watch youtube videos in an effort to improve myself.  I also spend different amounts of time focusing on the thing I feel like I need to improve the most.  A few weeks here, I'll spend more time on faces.  A few weeks there, bodies or hands.  Every once in awhile I'll draw a page where my interest is only in making the background look good.  The amount of time I spend on any one thing is proportional to how good it looks, typically.

The more I improve, the harder it will likely be to improve.  As is true with everything.  Some day, my style will probably stop evolving, both actively and passively.  When that occurs, will it be a plateau or a peak?  It's something I want to be very aware of, so I can work to get past it, but it is something that has never happened to me before... so how will I know when it happens?  And if it ever occurs, what can I do to get past it?  These things are worrying me lately.

Now, obviously, my art still has a long way to go before I probably reach such a thing, but what I've been noticing more and more is that I'm quite happy with what I've been drawing.  That's unusual for me.  Usually I'll draw something and hate it a few days later.  Now I'll draw something and be okay with it even weeks after the fact, despite the errors and flaws I still see in it.  It's more than just being proud of having drawn it... it's a feeling of "yeah, that still looks pretty alright overall."  And I can't express how abnormal that feels.

Anyway, I've become distracted and lost my train of thought...  Also I don't remember if I ranted about this topic before in a recent post.  I guess my point is that I never want to stop improving, because that's what makes this all really fun for me.