Erica has no before drawing
because I drew her recently, thus she is not canon. Does this mean I'm out of old drawings
to redo? Lord no, in fact I haven't even gotten to most of my
favorites. So why the new meat? Well, today I want to impart a lesson
on anyone who might be reading this, a hard learned lesson.
Sometimes you just have to give up.
The original drawing I've been working
on was of horrible 80s fashion on a person of Japanese descent. And
it's a fucking. Disaster. The dress and body are great but I made so
many weird gaffes with the face that no amount of tweaking is going
to salvage it. Mostly it's a problem of proportions and hair. I made
the hair cover the face in weird ways and the ears are basically
touching the eyes.
When you're working on a project and
there is a little voice telling you, as you progress further and
further, “This isn't helping! This isn't helping!” it's sometimes
just best to scrap it.
Erica here also demonstrates the other
problem I am having that is becoming increasingly frustrating in that
when I make black hair I keep losing all the detail within. I think I
need to do some more experimentation and research. The blue I used
once doesn't work every time, white is too jarring, and gray just
looks weird.
This drawing is in and of itself a bit
of a disaster due to that fact (among others). The outfit's good but
that hand . . . oof. The hairline is also bizarre (I was trying to learn how to draw cornrows). That I finally, after drawing Erica weeks ago, have published her drawing tells you how bad the other one is.
Art tips: Every creative person has
good days and bad days. The truth is, I've done many things
artistically this week that I just loved and felt like I was just
killin' at the time. So I'm not discouraged because creativity is
kind of like the tide: it ebbs and flows and each iteration brings
new things with it. Sometimes it's some beautiful starfish, sometimes
a bloated corpse. You never know which one you're gonna ge-ut.