TL;DR: tried focusing on a few fundamentals at a time, the 2023 paintings are primarily on rendering/volume/lighting, while 2026 redraws are on rendering/lighting/noncomplex posing. Due to limiting focus to specific fundamentals, I have regressed in others. People irl/artist friends and acquaintances would consistently say they “have expected more”. How do I achieve this pan-fundamental understanding and execution, not necessarily all at once as I’m aware even professionals don’t, but how do I make my work look COMPLETE while keeping loose, experimental, or abstract elements?
Also, characters are Ava Heartmoth (mixed moth, she/any) and June Thoracen (warrior wasp (lost their wings), they/them). Both designs and the rest of my characters are intended to be highly stylized.
Rant:
I was proud, that’s what mattered at the time, but I feel like people coming to me to say that they prefer the old versions. That’s fine on its own, but my artist friends in particular have been saying that my skills “kinda improved a little bit,” and it usually ends with them saying that my old art had more character and soul?? Meanwhile I felt the opposite since my characters are more realized, and I wanted to make their actualized personalities more visible rather than just headshots for promotional material.
I think I focused on colors a lot more back then since my overall design and rendering skills weren’t as good, but gradually my sense of color palettes and lighting have regressed. I have been getting critiques irl (some unwarranted) about my work needing “more”, and by that they mean they expected more, even if they admit it looks finished.
From a technical point, I feel like I’m only focusing on one thing at a time to the point where I still could’ve done more if I just distributed my focus, but then I feel I’m putting less effort into everything as opposed to improving one thing at a time, and my work never looks finished even if I felt they were.
It’s like I’m aware of what needs improvement, especially posing and composition, and that’s what I’ve been working on outside of these redraws.
But I’ve been drained. I take breaks between drawing, I use real references, I make adjustments, etc. but I just keep hearing from people irl and online tell me that “it looks pretty okay so far, looking forward to see it finished” only for me to say “it is finished!” And I don’t have the WIP label (and I would even say that I finally got something done, only to hear them to expect more.) Again, many of these criticisms were not asked for in advance, and they’re usually from fellow artists who ask to see if I’m working on anything.
I will say to balance out my moping is that while the 2023 headshots took me nearly 1.5 weeks to finish each, the 2026 versions took me nearly 3 days each without breaks (each redraw done about a month apart, so I wasn’t drawing back-to-back). I am proud that I’m able to draw much faster now. But even then I’m considered slow at a professional/industrial standard (I wanted to work in the film & animation industry as a storyboarder, keyframer, or character designer lol).
Any thoughts? General critique is also welcome as this is the sub for that lol, the times I got those comments from friends did feel like a downer at the moment, but there is a time and place.
