Deviation Actions
Description
I have to say I'm quite amazed at how quickly my style changed at the start! I think going to medical school helped, as I rapidly learnt real anatomy and better ways to proportion people. I also invested in a graphic tablet, which also contributed to the improvement.
After that dramatic jump between 2005-2006, my style seemed to have settled more, and my drawings were more consistent.
In 2007 I learnt about textures and added them to clothing and such like, giving them a little more depth.
In 2008, I made a more conscious effort to improve my skin and clothing shading as I was starting to make a bit of a hash of it. I developed a method called 'triangle theory' which helped make folds look deeper, although they still looked very rigid. I also changed my original character designs.
In 2009 I revisited some old drawings (Zidane and Dagger from Final Fantasy 9 and Sabriel and Touchstone from Garth Nix's book Sabriel) and re-attempted them, with much improved results! I also tried for more exciting poses as I was getting a bit too comfortable with static ones. I continued developing this in 2010, although that was a bit of a dry year for art for me as I had my medical finals.
2011 came around and I discovered the magic that is brush sets. This helped form more believable textures (although I did go overboard sometimes, as with the surfing picture of my original character!). Towards the end of this year I also got a new graphic tablet, which helped as my old one had become quite worn out.
In 2012 I started a new novel, The Binding, and so wanted to visualise my characters. I also met new writer friends on a website called authonomy, and I dabbled in a little fanart, too. I had to go back to using references for a while, though, as I wasn't drawing as frequently as before thanks to work, so a lot of my posing wasn't freehand like before. I was also wanting to move to a more realistic style, but it never seemed to work out so I stuck with what I knew.
When 2013 arrived, I was starting to look at other aspects of art, such as landscape perspective and mixing brush textures to make smoother and less stuck-on backgrounds. By now I was mostly focused on my novel characters so I didn't do any fanart as I had done previously.
Now, earlier this year, 2014, I discovered this amazing tutorial. This was what I'd been missing in 2012. For the first time I could finally see where I was going wrong, and so now I've started on a brand new style!
I look forward to what the years to come will reveal!
UPDATE: Added the last three years. The biggest change here was switching from painting within lines to painting over them, leading to a different style. And in the last few months, I found Istebrak's channel on youtbue- she provides great crit vids and runs a lovely art community. Definitely check her out!