I did a comparison like this before, but now that I have received a bunch of new watchers since then ( thank you! ) I thought I would do it again but be a little more in depth to help people improve themselves as well! ovo Not the best person to do this, but hey lets give it a shot. Hopefully it'll help some of you!

 2-3 YEAR IMPROVEMENT

Left Design :
This one was made in august of 2012 and was made for a contest for Wolfvids ( whom is now a good friend of mine )of which I somehow won? ew.

Right Design :
This one was made literally a few days ago! lol - has since been sold.

Artist Notes :
Okay so pretty much the first one was a big pile of poo, hopefully we can all agree on that XD I was 13 at the time ( am now 17 ). I got praised for that design, which was much appreciated at the time! But now that I look at it again, I have absolutely no clue as to why.

What's wrong with the first design? :
Well to be quite honest, mostly everything! His line art is a complete disaster and was clearly rushed. It lacks life to it since the line art is completely black ( not saying you have to use colored lines of course! ) But it does help quite a bit. The neon on top of the brown coloring just DOESN'T work. Anatomy wise, he's about zero percent original, and he's missing his two right legs apparently.

How can I improve? :
There's lots you can do to improve! It never hurts to search through artwork from other people and get a spark of inspiration. I know many of times I've seen beautiful designs or artwork that has inspired me to make something amazing too, and that helped nudge me considerably to improvement. As far as anatomy goes, if you're looking to do realistic art, ( wolves, deer, moo cows, etc.. ) then I would suggest looking for the simplest of tutorials to start with. Don't jump right into a professional artists behemoth of a tutorial with a billion words, you need something easily understandable until you're at least more experienced! ( this is just my opinion, but it's really an important thing that I've come to learn trust me. ) If you're wanting to work with creatures rather than natural animals, I suggest getting as creative as possible! And no, I don't mean dogs or cats of any kind with any water, food or inanimate body parts, it's simply not original. If you want to do something that people can admire for being new and exciting, I suggest just letting your hand flow freely on whatever canvas you're working on rather than thinking about it too much, take down a few ideas onto paper as you go along with sketching and put them into action with whatever you're drawing! Coloring wise, if you use a color wheel, I suggest to stay away from the upper right corner * ONLY APPLYING TO GREEN AND YELLOW *where all the neon is, try to stick to middle areas or more to the left side for these otherwise they'll be too bright and look like the ugly thing up top.

I've been trying for years to improve but haven't gotten far, I think i'm going to give up.. :
I cannot stress this enough never EVER give up. If you give up, you're proving to yourself and other people that you aren't an artist worth wasting time on. I know you may be down, and trust me I know. I cried everyday over my art and was so depressed with the fact people younger than me were already at a professional point. But that's part of life, someone will always be better than you at something! Which includes those people as well. YOU WILL IMPROVE. And you don't necessarily need practice to do it. I never have been able to use tutorials even though I have a bunch of them saved. I learn on my own and with inspiration bursts, not so much tutorials on how something " should " be done. Instead, take the high road and do something YOUR way. You don't need to follow the crowd and try to learn what others are if that's not what you want. If you want to use a tutorial - perfect! they're usually very helpful and can push you in the right direction with techniques and anatomy. If you don't want to use a tutorial - Still perfect! It usually gives a bigger sense of accomplishment when you stay independent in your efforts to improve, it's made me happy with myself.

Last minute tips? : Stay YOU. Again as I mentioned before, people change themselves and do things just for others enjoyment, like you could have started doing OC art, and then you do one fan art piece and that's all people care to see from you, and they get so pressured that they do more of it until it consumes them. If people don't like that you draw your own characters, screw em. They aren't faithful as a watcher nor are they really worth anyone's time, they're a selfish and ignorant type of person that no one really wants to deal with. Artists create content that they want to ( when it's not paid work ) and you're free to do the same. Don't feel like you need to have a cutesy style because that's what most people are into. If you love drawing in a creepy style, then that's entirely fine! No need to change yourself.

Adopts? :
Another thing I wanted to say is, granted you can be original and it is highly encouraged, but i'm not going to lie with the fact that, yes, certain styles sell better than others. If you're planning on doing adopts, in a way you have to adjust to what buyers are interested in, but at the same time not losing what you like to do either. It's a complicated thing, and the adopt business doesn't come easy. I've been doing it since that picture on the left was made and I barely made anything in the beginning. My prices stayed low because my style and designs weren't very desirable and I didn't have a lot of variety. I did have to change a little to better fit what others were interested in, but not to the point of me not enjoying my work. Thankfully for myself, what I personally like color wise and design wise seem to be what my buyers seem to like as well which is a win for me, but it's not always that way. Don't be afraid to go out of your comfort zone for once to see how it goes!

It's okay to get inspiration off of others, but don't forget that stealing ideas/copying is wrong and should NEVER be done.


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Hopefully this journal isn't all over the place, i'm not the best at explaining or expressing how I feel, so apologies if anything sounds off or incorrect XD;;;
If you have any questions or need any advice/help, feel free to note me! i'm always open to it ovo/