These are some of the photos I saved from my first tumblr before I deleted it. I think they’re mostly from 2016, when I was beginning to get serious about art. Here you can see some of my first honest attempts at character design, backgrounds, and dragons. And gosh darn are they awful! Aside from the absence of discernible anatomy, I think the thing that repulses me most about these old pieces is the line quality. Each contour is made of several discordant lines which crash into each other like fiberglass splinters. And I speak from experience when I say that having fiberglass splinters is NOT FUN.
I haven’t looked at these drawings for a while, so I was surprised to find that the experience was akin looking into a funhouse mirror. Compared to my drawings now, these old designs are rather exaggerated examples of my worst artistic faults and habits. But I still see those bad habits and gaps of knowledge in my work today, in a more restrained form. I’m still wrestling with the same problems. I’m still Daniel Haycox. I’ve been consistently frustrated with my line quality recently – my clean linework looks stale, my gestural work lacks flow – so it was oddly reassuring to see that I was already dealing with those issues back in 2016. And even more reassuring to see that there has been progress. That’s the main reason why I keep my old art around, and why I recommend you keep yours – as a boost of much needed encouragement. I’m always a bit relieved to find myself unimpressed by my past work, because that means I’m still growing, still learning, and still becoming a better artist. Someday the work I’m doing now will become past work. And I’m so excited to see what I’ll be creating then.
God bless,
dh
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