How do you improve your craft? Part Two:

In the first post we took a look at one of the studies I did for John Boyega's British GQ photoshoot. I did a second one below that follows much of the same principles:

Owning your unique process.

I've made no bones about how my process can look wildly different from piece-to-piece. Sometimes I work with pencil lineart, which I do with basic copy paper and scan in. No matter what, the inner child in me loves creating her own coloring books. There's also a satisfying graininess that comes with blending traditional art and digital art. Pencil art + digital paint always appears a little tighter, a little more polished. Not so for these studies, however.

Other times my sketching process needs to be more loose. I'll need space to tweak on the fly. Erase, flip, distort, smudge, tweak the values. Digital art is brilliant in that regard, able to literally slice up your process into little pieces that can be viewed with redo and undo, and has given me so much more freedom to approach my art. No matter how many people try to push it down the lowbrow ladder. 

(if digital art is automatically less valid by virtue of having extra conveniences, then acrylic paint, pencils and erasers, whiteout, gouache, charcoal and nearly every piece of equipment ever should receive the same energy)

I also can't stress enough the benefit of experimenting and seeing what happens. For example, the finished study below has a thin, bright line around most of the subject, which is an aftereffect of a masking layer + overlay layer. It was actually unintentional, but I ended up appreciating that thin, crisp glow and kept it in. When in doubt? Quote Bob Ross: "There are no mistakes. Only happy accidents."

Check out the photoshoot here and get yourself hopped up on inspiration. You'll never know what your next favorite technique or visual shorthand could be until you try it out yourself.

I have more step-by-step process posts and behind-the-scenes peeks on original work up next, so stay tuned!