for about 6 months now I haven't been drawing as much as I'd like to. I've place my passion aside in order to work... work... and work. It's been exhausting. Also warning, this is a useless bit of info ramblings from my brain that I felt I needed to get out. Read if you like, whateva, ignore some of it. XD Ramblings! *grumble mutter* I really think this journal post is more for me than it is to share. After all, that's what these journal's are for. Several spelling mistakes i'm too lazy to go and correct. hehe, bare with me.

Yet I've had some time to squeeze in some practice doodles or some full page art work I'm not 100% pleased with. Yes, I'm being hard on myself. I've always been hard on myself over my art. That's because it's never perfect, it's never just right. There's always something wrong with a work I've completed. A flaw I notice and a flaw I try to fix. But that's just the thing about art. It should never be perfect. Never should it be exactly just right. There's always a mistake in a work one completes. I've had very few pieces that I've completed that has made me 100% happy. I can't name em off the top of my head. to know one has made mistakes in a work of art is to help one improve and get better.

Saying this and looking at recent stuff compared to stuff I drew six months ago has me thinking. Have I truly grown as an artist? I use to do nothing but draw, doodle and sketch. A lot of my time was drwawing, even at parties and events you always saw me with a note book (monkey pot) spare paper, pencil and my colour pencils. My views on my style back then was anime/realistic approach. A Me style. I didn't see myself as an anime artist, yet that was where my base came from. Now that I've had little time drawing, doodling and such, I've gone out of practice I think. I'm not as passionate about it as I was. Yet I was sitting here tonight with a brand new sketch book and pencil and trying to think of somthing to sketch. Thinking of some recent rps I've had with some friends, new characters I've created, and some stories I've bubbledup in my brain. (yes, bubbled) I found myself drawing differently than I use to. Looking at things back then, the bodies were kinda anime. Skinny no tummy bodies, long legs, no elbows, point square and oval shaped faces, big eyes, and bodiless hair. nothing compared to what I just drew. Here I've got a sketch of an oc who is maturing from what she use to be. She's got more of a stomach now, her arms aren't as flat and dare I say her nose isn't a sharp little pyramid or a straight line down. In fact it's round, with a nostrail and not a complete line showing the bridge. Not at all what I use to draw. Even her thighs are sensually drawn with more body; knees look like knees and her ankles are ankles. Even her eyes are more formed with eyelashes. I've given her a chin and a cheek with ears that are actually proportion to her face.

My style is not changing. Your style can never change. once you pick up that pencil and you start drawing, that is your style. A unique form of drawing what you see. It's what YOU see and how YOU see it. That is what I believe to be an artists' style. My style in art is simply growing. Maturing. Developing and improving. I use some turtorials that contain techinques and skills that surpass my own, I don't copy them I learn from them. A new techinque is always needed when you are improving. I do look up different refrences to draw thigns I haven't drawn before but I never stick to a single photo. I do not believe tracing, copying or simply refering to a SINGLE photo is how one learns. I look at several photos to try and understand how that muscle looks, how that pose is, how the body moves. To grasp the compelte understanding of a body part you need to see it in action. It does help having a single reference at the exact pose you need it in. that's a good way to see it clearly in your head. but to fully understand how to draw that body part, you have to see it in action. even though, I feel guilty still using refrence pics. If I made some of my own using friends, maybe I won't feel so bad. But when can you find the time to do it? Who could possibly do some of the things I need them to do? I know some if not most of my friends would be extremely uncomfortable strippin down for me and letting me taking pictures of them and stuff. haha.Who wouldn't be uncomfortable?
But really, I see my art growing, My style is maturing. It's comprehending my skills now and using them without fustrating myself that gets difficult. Gah. How do you draw what you want to draw without being so hard on yourself, telling yourself to stop correcting your mistakes and just draw? Stop thinking so deep Cc. Heheh