progress. [2021-2023 art dump]

Instructions

I know, I know, I left. But i just want to show the growth i've gone through to help encourage a bunch of growing artists out there! ^^ So...let's get right into it! PLEASE read the desc, it's extra imoprtant to show the meaning of why each of these pieces are included! 1. July 2021 Yowch, this really hurts to see. Back then I was still using the Scratch editor (vector) to create my art. And while I have seen many make incredible art this way, it really didn't work for me 2. November 2021 I switched to using procreate, kindly gifted to me by my father! You can see quite a bit of improvement in the confidence of the facial expressions, but there's still much room for improvement and I'm still only drawing bust shots (chest and up) 3. March 2022 I have a more solidified style here, and I remember being incredibly proud of this one at the time. However the anatomy is way off and I have been told that he looked like this set of emojis: ?️??️ I would like to say it isn't true, but it's far too much so 4. May 2022 This was a gift for a friend of mine that I am very fond of! You can see that I even attempted a background and fullbody pose here (i remember this is the first time I tried drawing fullbody.) I'd been working on a more anime style, however the anatomy still needs some work as the proportions are uneven. A great amount of growth since the earlier pieces though! 5. November 2022 As you can see there's a big jump in time here. I took a long break from art as I wasn't as invested in what i did. But i came in swinging, and was ridiculously proud of this! I had done one more piece before this, and did one after it as well that were both compositionally a lot better than before. 6. March 2023 Another big break, once again. Due to the amount of time I took off I lost a bunch of confidence in my art and resorted back to busts once again. I overused noise, grain, and glitch effects in an attempt to make me like the art piece better. It's still a piece I am proud of, but not as much as even the one before it in November of 2022 7. April 2023 I finished this one today actually! I went back to fullbodies and focused on lighting. this is actually one gift of many for my teacher's birthday! :) My strokes, lineart, lighting, and pretty much everything are more confident and i'm more adventerous with color choices! So, to wrap it up, i want to say thank you to you all for making my journey what it is. i wouldn't have had the courage to continue without all of you. So thank you, from the bottom of my heart. And you growing, wonderful artists out there, know this: talent doesn't make an artist. Hard work does. A talented artist will quickly lose sight of their goals when they don't put in the work. A hardworking artist might not be able to achieve natural talent, but can achieve skill instead, which is much more valuable, and a reflection of just how much you care about what you do. Don't let people tell you that you should give up on art. Don't let you tell YOURSELF that you should give up on art. If you think your art is bad, look back and see just how far you've come. Hopefully that will give you the courage to move onward. good luck, auj