Lost My Style

I've been getting frustrated with my art as of late. The more I look back on my recent artwork, the more I wonder who actually made these. I mean, its definitely not the work of the artist that I know, the artist that I am....well, thought that I was. Somewhere along the way, I lost who I was.

I don't know exactly when or how it happened, but it did. I think maybe its because of finding out about digital coloring and all of that jazz. I sort of half ass sketches and drawings now because coloring it will somehow 'bring it all together' and fix it all. And thats not how I used to draw, and I don't want to draw like that. My drawings used to be just detailed line arts, just pencils, then inks, and thats it. No comic influences, no deep blacks and heavily stylized comic book style, just my own vision, inked with my Staedtler .25, .35, .5 or .7 pens. Thats it. And now I feel like my drawings have been reduced to simple outlines you find in coloring books, with special effects added to mask the minimalism.

I think alot of it has to do with my present influences. I see alot of people on DeviantArt with that same style, and they get so much exposure, and I guess I subconsciously thought I could mimick that while still keeping a style thats my own. And it didn't turn out that way. Should I just go back to the boring non color black and whites? I don't know, only time will tell. I do know however that I'm minimizing my exposure to all of these 'art' social networking sites. That means MINIMAL DeviantArt, and little to NONE Pencil Jack. I think Pencil Jack is a good idea in theory, but not so much in practice. There are a couple of superb artists on there, those are the ones that you want critiquing your work to let you know if you're headed into the right direction. But I'll be damned if I post a piece on there that I spent hours on with pencils and inks, just to be ripped apart by some guy who draws with sharpies telling me that my 'proportions look wonky'. Dammit, your whole piece looks wonky. I think I'm just frustrated with it all right now...from being rejected by trying to join an art sketch club, to DeviantArt, to Pencil Jack...everything. So I'm shutting myself off to that and drawing at my own pace.

So, I'm taking a step back, and going really slow from now on, and trying to learn the ins and outs of this coloring software, and redefine my art style along the way to a point that I'm more than satisfied, and not just settling anymore.

Oh....here's an alternate finished picture of the Venom sketch I did a while ago...I think I like this one more than the original:


And this final picture is of the Spiderman one that I was working on in the last post. Nothing fancy really, just added a background. Not really too happy with it, I think I'm going to go over it again and see from there. **EDIT** Changed the picture:




-Charles