Noodle Pinup WIP (Patreon)

The lineart wasn't turning out so good...

I think I should share some more of the experiments or the drawings that are failures while I'm here, if I can talk about something interesting while I'm at it.

I've been talking out loud on twitter and with some friends about the problem where you can FEEL your art dying as you're doing the "inking" layer. And it's something I've wondered WHY I'm doing it that way. Inking is a nice way to get clean art, but it's an art form that was designed for teams to do. A master inker would be paired with a master penciller and a master colorist. People now, have taught themselves to do all three. And try to do all three to a level of quality where no part of their picture shows flaws.

And it kinda drains the life out of me. Here I could see it draining the life out of the drawing. This is down to a number of factors. The sketchy pencil allows for more blurry vision and your brain to do the heavy lifting of putting things together. It's also more complete, the lines feel more confident. I wasn't really inking this drawing very well, the gentle curves of the pencil didn't lend themselves to the style of inking I was using.

So lately, I've been taking it to heart that, instead of drawing over the sketch drawings which I love, and doubling the amount of work while killing a lot of the energy, I'll try to just... clean up my sketches. Bring them to a level of finish that I can live with. They don't have to be perfectly clean but just clean enough that nothing sticks out as an obvious mistake anymore.