***Benedict, Ririka, and their son Barry are my original characters; however, you are free to make fan art of them if you’d like! Also, Happy Valentine’s Day!!***

Nothing puts into perspective the journey you’ve been on more than putting your old work side-by-side with your new work—and WOW, did certain characters get total redesigns—especially Ririka.

My new style is a lot more ideal than my old style was; they look much more the way I want to, and are exaggerated in just the right ways. My style nowadays is a lot sexier than back then, and nowadays, I’m more likely to have a good art day than a bad one. Back in 2021 and especially 2022, it was sort of 50-50 on whether I’d have a good art day or not. However, some of my biggest improvements overall have been in my gesture drawing (even though it’s not pictured here), which helped improve the rhythm of my drawings, and the anatomy (even though the anatomy here is quite exaggerated).

One of the best pieces of advice I heard (from Art Prof, interestingly) was to “draw the whole body immediately” (through gesture). Before, I used to draw everything piece-by-piece, which made me much slower. While I’m still a pretty slow drawer due to health issues and the fact that I am super picky, I’m glad that I feel more confident when approaching various subjects.

Another area I feel like I’ve really improved in a lot compared to before is backgrounds—I’m especially liking my pseudo line-art style I’ve adopted, one which was innovated first in Lonely Planet - New Art Style Test (https://www.deviantart.com/yellowfunfungrape/art/Lonely-Planet-New-Art-Style-Test-983549049) on DeviantArt, and then refined in [GIFT] Wolf Family House REDRAW (https://www.furaffinity.net/view/53741774/), The Physical Embodiment of the Beach: UNCLE RAD (https://www.furaffinity.net/view/58026197/), and other drawings which I have not posted anywhere. I still cannot describe how much the knowledge of light and shadow—along with adding “color vibrations” to my work via the Color Jitter feature in Procreate and Clip Studio Paint—really added so much depth to my backgrounds and more painterly work. Furthermore, the Ink Bleed brush in Procreate, which I use for my inking and backgrounds, is literally just magic for my current style of doing backgrounds.

Overall, I feel pretty happy with where I’m at right now, but I still want to work on getting faster (since I do still want to make comics), not being so picky, and getting better at making up/creating architecture (I feel like I rely too much on references).

I hope you all enjoyed this little snippet of my art journey! What’re your thoughts on this piece, and what pieces of mine are your favorite from a personal standpoint and/or a technical standpoint?