I’ve never been great about putting dates on my art. I started digging through my old sketchbooks in search of some worthy redraw material, and discovered a big 8 ½” x 11 ½” spiralbound. Flipping through its smeary pages, I found sporadic dates ranging mostly from late 2008 to 2009. What’s interesting about this era is, it was the beginning of my more serious writing days. I started writing my debut sci-fi trilogy in ’08. As you can imagine, there was a lot of art related to that story in this sketchbook.
In fact, there was so much I thought it would be better to dedicate a whole future post just to Stardrift Trilogy art redraws eventually. For this post, I decided to pick drawings that stood alone. There are five. Let’s have a look at them now.
Girl T-Posing in a Field
Some of these drawings had titles, but this one didn’t, so that’s my title, now. I have a lot of comments about this one. First off, why in the world did I choose that angle on the face? With the head tilted back like that? That is not an easy angle. It actually isn’t even an intermediate angle, but here we are. I would like to congratulate my younger self for not shying away from the anatomy here. I think I remember studying this pose in the mirror so that I got the ins and outs of the arm-muscles right, and it shows.
Obviously, I liked the concept and vibe of this picture. That’s why I choose to redraw it. She’s actually most likely not t-posing, but probably dancing or something, judging by the hair and clothing movement. So, let’s look at my redraw.
The Redraw
This was the first of the drawings I redid, and I was excited to realize, for the first time I actually have developed a style. Clearly, I learned something about how I like to depict hair. Aside from a little more confidence in the foreshortening on the face (I still don’t like the angle) I think the hair is the clearest improvement you can see looking at the two images side-by-side.
Honestly, she looks happier in the first one. But this first redraw inspired me to move on to the next and see what else I had learned over the years.
Smug Girl from Visaclosure
So, I cheated a tiny bit here, because Visaclosure is in fact a planet from the Stardrift Trilogy and I said I was going to save that for later, but since this isn’t an actual character from the books, I decided to go ahead and include her. First off, this is not a proper way to sit wearing a dress, but clearly she could care less. Afterall, I probably wouldn’t care about much if I lived on Visaclosure either. It’s very sparsely populated and every human settlement established there quickly goes back to nature since everything on the planet grows extremely fast.
The hands and feet could use a little more effort, I think. A bad habit I had, and honestly still have, is trying to draw faces on a scale that’s way too small to expect much. This face is under an inch from chin to hairline. It’s really hard to work that small. I tried to draw a little bigger the second time around.
The Redraw
Okay, so it’s kind of an illusion if the face looks any bigger here. I measured, and it actually isn’t. But obviously I got better at drawing faces overall, and was able to get something a lot more human looking into that inch of paper this time. Once again, you can see I figured out how I like to stylize my faces and figures now. I’ve outgrown my ghost stage as well, and I actually know how to put a little pressure on the pencil, which is kind of a plus for people trying to see my art.
I also thought it was funny that she has a similar little thing on her shoulder as the girl in the field. I’m not sure what my obsession with little metal rings as sleeve-ornaments was about.
The confidence is the biggest difference here. Everything about the second piece is much more intentional. And the girl looks a lot more like somebody you might actually see.
Thunderbird, the horse
Thunderbird was my imaginary horse growing up. What? You didn’t have an imaginary horse growing up? She was a blue roan mustang with a stubborn, fiery temperament. She was also my warhorse, but we’ll get to that later. Anyway, I almost think I wasn’t looking at a reference picture for this, so it’s pretty good, considering. But I don’t know what I was doing with the eye. That’s not how horses’ eyes look. Also, is that her other ear coming out from behind her forehead? Because I don’t think that should be visible.
The Redraw
Once again—the hair. Also, I am no longer a ghost, you’re welcome. Though I’m still not super confident with equine anatomy, (and once again was not using a reference) you can see that my understanding for the forms clearly has improved. Another thing I though was interesting about this picture is the way you could still see my stylization carried over from my human drawings, even though my subject was an animal rendered more thoroughly than the previous drawings.
Kids, don’t be afraid of putting some graphite on your paper. Draw hard lines. Shade things in. Your future self will thank you.
Mists of Time
This one had a title. I suspect this is another depiction of a scene on Visaclosure. I loved the aesthetics of that world so much. We have here, an ancient time-keeper—apparently this past civilization divided their day into tenths. I don’t have a lot to say about this picture. I just wanted to see if I had gotten any better at drawing environments.
The Redraw
And I think I have. It’s a lot easier to understand the landscape and distances shown in this second picture. I also was a lot more patient about filling in the foliage and adding details for believability. Forms are a lot more solid and there’s good depth contrast between the foreground and the background.
I changed the design of the vines in this one. I think they were supposed to be opal vines—aggressive low-growing vines with little pearlescent white fruit. They pose a major tripping hazard in the undergrowth. The second picture is more how I imagined them in Stardrift.
Self-Portrait as a Warrior
And now, another episode from my childhood. My siblings and I were very into imaginative play growing up. We had a war that literally went on for years. There were a bunch of made-up characters, locations, and political situations involved—not to mention talking gorillas with swords. They were bad guys. Anyway, I eventually became a commander for some reason (and Thunderbird was my warhorse, as you might recall.) I thought I was cool, but I was probably pretty annoying to work with—always going rouge, had a petty rivalry with another officer who was better at winning over the higherups. It was so fun.
Anyway. I found this picture, which I clearly wasn’t happy with at the time. When I noticed I had literally promised myself to try it again later, (in writing at the bottom of the page) I decided this was the time.
The Redraw
I think little me would have been really pleased. Here we have a lip-curling frizzy-haired little fighter who actually knows how to sit on a rock.
I kind of want to draw my old rival, now. I never really did get a satisfactory picture of him, and he was kind of a good-looking kid, to be fair.
Improvement?
I realized something as I was looking at these drawings. Yes, I have gotten visibly better and have learned to more accurately produce the things I see in my head. Yes, my confidence has increased, and I like the way my style has developed. But there was another thing I realized from this activity. It wasn’t about my art.
It was about my writing. I’ve been writing fiction for fifteen years now, and somehow I have tricked myself into thinking I haven’t improved much at all. But this is how much I’ve improved in art over that time—and I wasn’t even drawing every day. I wasn’t feverishly studying and pushing myself to the next level year after year. But I improved massively.
And I think I haven’t improved at other things? Writing, which I’ve been aggressively fighting to uplevel almost every day? Life in general, after all this experience?
Don’t doubt you’re getting better at the things you love, everybody. You won’t always feel it. You’ll doubt yourself more often than not. But you are getting better, and you’ve already come so far.
