2003 - 2009 improvement meme

UniKoRn 2003 - 2009 meme by ~unikorn on deviantART

I’ve always loved drawing. I’m good but not fantastic. I’ve had to be very critical of myself to start improving. Learning to accept criticism is really hard!

I find it really interesting that the problems of preserving artwork have been solved by the computer. A digital file can be replicated with ease, without loss of quality and will last forever with no deterioration.

I mentioned ‘memes’ in a previous entry. Another form of them is art memes. Someone creates a challenge and then other artists can follow it. In this case, someone on the website DeviantArt, created a blank template and asked people to compile pieces of artwork from 2003 to 2009 and observe their improvement over the years.

My old artwork was a little awkward looking because I didn’t plan out the poses or facial features enough. I didn’t use references for anatomy very often either. In comparison, around 2007 I began to observe photo references more often and the anatomy looks much better. I’m far from perfect at it but I’m getting there. As when I am sketching without any references, things come together much better.

In 2003 - 2004 all my digital coloring had all the telltale tacky signs of a Photoshop newbie. I didn’t really understand much about choosing color pallettes that work and in fact I’m still learning. I think my choice of colors could have helped a lot of my older artwork to look better. Building up depth with different colors is something I need to explore more.

I also branched out to using different programs to create art. A few
times I’ve used Adobe Illustrator to make sharp clean outlines. I barely
understood how to use the pen tool and had no idea about the
pathfinder. It took me a long time to get the outlines right and often
I’d just delete the path and start again because I didn’t know how
to edit the nodes! Since starting Graphic Design at Deakin last year,
I’ve learn more about Illustrator and my future work in it should be
much more effecient!

Another program I tried is called Open Canvas. It has a really great
way of handling digital painting. You can achieve similiar results in
Photoshop but it takes a lot more effort to set up the paintbrush
settings. I only had a demo of Open Canvas a few years ago and
some unfinished work files don’t work even though I recently bought
the full version. If I had of known I’d lose those files, I would have
converted them to Photoshop .psd files while the demo still worked.

I love that digital art can achieve paint-like results without all the
mess that comes along with the real thing. Not everyone has the
appropriate space in their home for an art studio but just about
everyone owns a computer these days. You don’t even need to buy
expensive software like Photoshop. there are free websites where
you can draw such as Oekaki boards. I’ve even seen amazing
pictures that were created in MS Paint.

I’ve really learnt that it’s not all about owning the best or most
expensive tools. Something amazing can still be made with low
tech computers or software.

Part of the reason I wanted to attend university, is that I really
wished to improve my art skill. The irony is that while I am learning
all the techniques to make my work much better, I don’t have as
much leisure time to actually apply it to any large personal art
projects. But I look forward to being able to create much more
successful art pieces.

A large portion of my work is just fan-art. But I hope to have the
confidence & skill to create my own characters and comics on a
professional level one day.