The Sweep

   I've finally finished (?) cleaning up and archiving a lot of my old notes and drawings. In neat plastic sleeves, so that I can flip through the pages without worrying about touching any of the old weird stains. I can look back at my portfolio as a whole. There's a marked improvement in the quality of my art over the years. Alright! I can say. I sucked! Recognizing this only means that I can recognize old lack of skill in myself, and that I've improved my style. Though, really, I don't even know what my "style" was back then. There's a brevity of form that I needed to follow, but didn't. There were good parts, good bits in each of the drawings, but how is the viewer supposed to know that it's deliberate when that good part is overshadowed by the accidents and the errors and the outright lack of talent, in other places?

   I've got a few sleeves set aside for my 24 hour comics, which thankfully get progressively better as well. These are always a good indicator of the artist's abilities at the time. The ideal test, really. Made in a single burst of productivity, they give an exact snapshot of the creator's writing and drawing and layout. Think of it like coring a tree to see the rings. Still improving. From a stylized style to a more realistic style to a more three-dimensional style. A pretty clear linear progression of improvement, but looking at them it's now so simple, since I added another layer on top of that, since I deliberately drew on different artists each time for influences in the art style of each one. Imaginably, it's really hard to compare between them since each of the projects has a very different feel. One, two, three. Kazu Kibuishi, Alicia Austin, Joann Sfar. (People are just awesome.) I suppose in a sense this makes it "cleaner" to compare my own talent between each 24 hour comic, since it's not reliant simply upon one style and ideal to gauge against, if you can see past the surface and down into other techniques. But, still, it's tough.

   That's not all of them in there. I'm still working and practicing on new styles. Not even all of my stuff is in the archive. I mean, I've still got some current projects out, locked and loaded, working on, outside of those binders. I'm still practicing. It's definitely about style here, and I think I've reached the zenith of one and am now practicing and moving onto another, (by tracing other people's artwork and then seeing how they got a feel for their characters, if you must know.) This new style is throwing all of my old Other//half character designs off, but I think that's why I said that I'm at the zenith of that particular style. Those old designs aren't quite as-- realistic, as I would like? Something. I keep on trying to draw the characters better, but they all come out looking the same as they did before, so of course it has to do with the character modeling. These characters as characters already have some form of icon, so I can't alter their designs too radically. Trying to merge the two styles so that character design is somewhat retained. Going alright.

   So: looking through old stuff, seeing it get better, and continuing to improve. Hopefully catching up with some of my more talented peers in that area. It's the practice that's important, in both senses of the word.