I've been thinking of trying warmups as well, loads of people say they help but I've never tried it. Love the colours and painterly feel on this :)

At first I was against them with the mindset of "I'm spending an hour or more on a warmup, why don't I just do that for work I owe?" Thing is, I'm seeing it more as a good way to do photo studies, and while I'm only two days in of doing warmups before work, it helps a lot to just get a creative idea out on paper before needing to focus in on ideas/work that are already set in stone.

Yeah that's the exact reason I've put it off - 'wasting time' I guess is how I thought of it. But sometimes I just have off days where I struggle a lot on something I know I can get done and it's frustrating, so I think these are going to become part of my regular techniques. I like the idea cos it also allows some freedom which if you have a lot of commissions where everyone knows exactly what they want, some 'personal' art def helps keep your motivation up.

Ended up sleeping way too much otherwise I would have responded sooner. x.x

This is slightly unrelated, but another fear I had for awhile when drawing.... Maybe a year or so ago.

I feared improvement. Not for my own sake, but because I feared that if I did a commission for someone, improved, and did a commission for someone else, I was suddenly "cheating" the first person out of better art. I almost hurt myself badly by avoiding learning, avoiding studies, and trying to remain the same for the sake of everyone I currently was doing work for at the time. Kindof took a slap to the face by someone I look up to in order to change out of those habits and work again on doing art for myself as well as everyone else. And even then, it took awhile to build up better habits.

For example with the warmup I did today: I wasn't really happy with the final result. But now I have something to look over and think about WHY I don't like the final result. And it's on paper instead of just stuck in my head with the thought of "what if" where I can't focus on my work for the day. Growing up I'd always be stuck daydreaming with the thought of "what if", where doing actual work was really difficult since I never could get my ideas out of my head.

Oh wow I didn't realise anyone else got that feeling, I've felt guilty for past commissions because I look back on them and think 'Shit, I could have done that better now'.

I find studies good for just learning techniques and such (also colour / lighting tips) without thinking 'is this gonna affect the final commission'. I like material studies because they're something I don't really paint much for commissions which is the majority of my art lately, so its a bit refreshing too.

Def gonna start doing warmups now! Also, watched :)

I suppose one other fear is "they bought a commission from me but I've improved/changed since then, am I letting them down?" I try to think of it as, they're trusting me based on the art they've seen me do, so I need to trust myself when working on it, and it'll turn out ok. Somedays it is difficult fighting these thoughts/urges, but I refuse to stop moving forward since I do eventually want to work on becoming a concept artist (which does sound slightly cliche even now).

I also do quite a few studies that I share mainly on Patreon. It's taken awhile to get to the point of doing a few of them, but at the same time it's been well worth it. Here's a few more recent ones:
https://puu.sh/ynu9g/5e3b906d2b.jpg
https://puu.sh/ynvkh/2e5e71cfb4.jpg

Even though they were quick photo studies to practice scales, they really helped a lot to understand them more. Hoping to do more texture/material studies in the future so I can slowly add more to the paintings I'm working on.

Yeah that's what I mean, like I know we're our own harshest critic so it's probably not as bad as it seems to ourselves, but it's still a pain. I want to be a concept artist too, but I need to work on my human anatomy - especially faces and hands :(

Those studies look really good, scales are definitely a challenge - especially since there are so many types.

This is really lovely!

Thank you! I really love your icon too. (:

Awww, now I can't show you.

LMAO 100% same feeling right here

Oh my gosh this is gorgeous, the atmosphere of the piece is lovely ♡

This is super slick, yo. <3

This is gorgeous! ^^

Nice face and feathers!