The Grand Art Lookback

So, I felt like now was the time to stop, take a breath and evaluate my art progress. Because, actually, I am currently marking the two-year (and plus some) not-actually-anniversary of my art progress lately. And also, the piece I finished last night falls nicely into a box, where I have a consecutive line of pieces to do comparisions. Another one in the genre of: "Dude chilling, doing stuff." Also, critting your old self is fun.

2013: My Sarkhan piece, done in SAI. I pulled this one off DA in a purge a while back. This is the very, very first digital piece I completed after I, out of boredom and frustration, decided to re-learn how to art. This was september 2013, and I had not completed any art courses yet. All I had was my then-BF's shitty tablet, his computer and a drawing I did by hand and scanned. And a bunch of MtG-art to aspire to. I had zero theory under my belt at that point. Almost no knowledge of anatomy, form, colours, perspective... I did not use reference, nor proper line-art. I had not even found the Oatley Academy or Sycra yet.
Bottom line: The colous are muddy, the anatomy dead wrong, the forms weird and the painting inconsistent. But damned, were I proud of this back then!

In between these two, I were incredibly productive, but also very directionless. I just mauled my way through random theory, drawing like some insane person. But, weirdly, not actually drawing enough, since most of what I did were not sketches and doodles, but huge PS-projects. I could have used some more idea generation and just raw pencil practice.

2014: My Jon Snow, done in PS in the early autumn of 2014. This one never went up on DA. Here I had taken one drawing course, almost a year ago then. I manically watched Sycra and Bluefley videos, and read everything I could get my hands on regarding art theory. It was sinking in, I think, but slowly. Also I did not draw enough. My sketchbooks were filling up, but not fast enough. I started doing more figure drawing around this time.
I do like many things about this. Clearly, I've gotten a lot better at everything. The colours especially, I love, and the snow painting and background with the bird I still like a lot. (Even though the bird's anatomy is pretty bad.) But woe, the shapes and lighting are so inconsistent. Also the anatomy is very wonky, especially the arm with the sword and the shoulders. And the sword itself makes zero sense. The face is nice though. Not too over-painted, and with some life and tones. But, I should have used more reference for this.

After this point, I fell into a massive art block. I had started university again, which of course limited my available time, but also brought new perspectives and inspiration into my life. I went back to traditiona, and I have since done a ton of watercolour, graphite, charcoal and pastel-stuff. The digital side of things sort of died out though. My best investment was a moleskine I bought this august - I have lugged it around together with some ink pens, watersoulable graphite and a water brush since then, and there has come a lot of good out of that, because of a few rules I made for drawing in it: 1, no doodles. Everything must fill the entire page. Hence, stuff that starts as a doodle, I am forced to unfurl as far as I can. 2, always use reference. 3, work untill I feel confident enough to show this off to people. I've so far produced two large paintings from sketches made in it, and have pushed my inking and hatching too.

2015: Maybe it's too soon to crit this, but I can already see a lot of imperfections here... Done last night in PS. I did use reference for this, although vague. At this point, I've completed another art course - last winter/spring.
The composition is pretty boring and the palette pretty uniform - but it's how I imagined the scenery, so I guess that is not a bad thing. The anatomy is still not perfect, but better. (Reference helps!!) Also, my use of photo-textures is shameless. But it looks pretty good. I had tons of issues with the hands,and I think the leg he's standing on is very flat and disconnected. But, compared to the previous one, my shapes seem much more real and 3-dimensional. Also the colours are more vivid, although restricted. I should maybe have applied some motion blur to that back leg and fabric... that can happen in a revision, some time, after I've given this one time to sit.

Onwards! I'm enrolling in a new art class after christmas, so hopefully that will take me another step further, next year.