Cleaning out old sketchbooks and discovered this unfinished Tank Girl from college (somewhere between 2010 and 2015)
I really really like this piece a lot... but it makes me very sad.
We often look back at old pieces and think "This looks like it was made by someone else". I feel that way here, but for very specific reasons.
One being the paper it was done on, a Copic sketchbook with heavy smooth paper usually intended for markers. I used it almost exclusively during college because it took pencil really well. To my knowledge though, they are no longer produced.
The other, sadder reason I envy this piece, is that I used to have a much steadier hand, and to me it really shows here.
This kind of hard linework and precise shading used to be fairly simple for me. If it looks similar to my current work, it's because all my drawings nowadays have massively tweaked exposure and contrast to darken the lines, plus cleanup in Clipstudio Paint.
This is a phone photo of the piece. There isn't any cleanup here, and the lines look this good in-person. My pencil work now must be scanned and put through a fairly heavy darkening/editing process to look like this.
I've learned a lot since college, and I feel more confident, ambitious, and free in my design work and gestural drawing..
But I've lost a lot. There are skills and techniques that age has taken away from me. Digging through these sketchbooks is fun, and I'm proud of a lot of the stuff I did...
but I'm older. I feel older. My hands shake now, they aren't steady and strong like they used to be. I'm finding stuff in these boxes I couldn't manage nowadays.
Styles change, techniques change, and not always when or how we want them to. Still, while looking through these, I'm a little jealous of my younger self.
prguitarman
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areudirty
vaporwave
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