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Description
pixiv link: www.pixiv.net/member_illust.ph…
☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️This one is quite old now (around half a year since it was started), it's been in "on hold" state until I was done with that-one-drawing (well, almost everything I post for a while will be like that, I have quite a bit in store)

I normally don't like repeating myself too much, so even though this is basically "www.deviantart.com/solmyr2000/… , take two", there's a good reason for that.
It was never planned and wasn't intended to be a finished work. It started as a random mindless doodle, painted on a single layer with just watercolor brushes, with no sketch, construction or preparation beforehand, which unexpectedly turned out well enough, so I took it further. I didn't dare to try something new (the way I was doing it WAS radically new for me and a new theme would be overkill) so I went with a familiar theme.

It was very surprising to me how much I could actually do while working on just one layer (shocking, turns out I ACTUALLY have some painting skills), and it caused a bunch of things to happen:
First of all, weirdly enough, it led to a temporary return of lineart. When you're painting everything on a single layer, it's not exactly easy to keep the edges clean, but you can just make another layer and draw thick colored lines on top of the edges, voila, they become clean!
And then I realized I can just paint over those lines again and "blend" them, keeping the clean edges it gave me, but also concealing the lineart itself. And then I realized that, in general, this way I can paint over stuff again and again instead of trying to keep everything clean and in separate layers - even if I make a mess I can clean it up quite easily.

That realization led to mostly keeping things on a few layers, readily merging layers and not trying to keep any kind of structure, but rather just using them as a tool.
Quite a change for someone who used to have hundreds of layers and was worried about making irreversible changes.

My programmer background is probably a big part of why it took me so long to finally switch to, well, drawing like normal people. I've been treating my work kinda like a program, "constructing" it from discrete parts, instead of focusing on the whole, which is the only thing that matters for a drawing.
Back when I started drawing, the way I did it was entirely formulaic - part-by-part, step-by-step using established procedures that "worked", altering/improving them a bit every drawing. It's what helped me learn to draw, but after a certain point, it's just been holding me back. I got rid of "step-by-step" approach, embracing improvisation, quite a while ago, but I never really got rid of "part-by-part" mentality until this painting.

So yeah, it's pretty weird how one random doodle had that much impact. Don't underestimate random doodles.

Anyway, one deadline met, 6 more to go...

Description
pixiv link: www.pixiv.net/member_illust.ph…
☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️This one is quite old now (around half a year since it was started), it's been in "on hold" state until I was done with that-one-drawing (well, almost everything I post for a while will be like that, I have quite a bit in store)

I normally don't like repeating myself too much, so even though this is basically "www.deviantart.com/solmyr2000/… , take two", there's a good reason for that.
It was never planned and wasn't intended to be a finished work. It started as a random mindless doodle, painted on a single layer with just watercolor brushes, with no sketch, construction or preparation beforehand, which unexpectedly turned out well enough, so I took it further. I didn't dare to try something new (the way I was doing it WAS radically new for me and a new theme would be overkill) so I went with a familiar theme.

It was very surprising to me how much I could actually do while working on just one layer (shocking, turns out I ACTUALLY have some painting skills), and it caused a bunch of things to happen:
First of all, weirdly enough, it led to a temporary return of lineart. When you're painting everything on a single layer, it's not exactly easy to keep the edges clean, but you can just make another layer and draw thick colored lines on top of the edges, voila, they become clean!
And then I realized I can just paint over those lines again and "blend" them, keeping the clean edges it gave me, but also concealing the lineart itself. And then I realized that, in general, this way I can paint over stuff again and again instead of trying to keep everything clean and in separate layers - even if I make a mess I can clean it up quite easily.

That realization led to mostly keeping things on a few layers, readily merging layers and not trying to keep any kind of structure, but rather just using them as a tool.
Quite a change for someone who used to have hundreds of layers and was worried about making irreversible changes.

My programmer background is probably a big part of why it took me so long to finally switch to, well, drawing like normal people. I've been treating my work kinda like a program, "constructing" it from discrete parts, instead of focusing on the whole, which is the only thing that matters for a drawing.
Back when I started drawing, the way I did it was entirely formulaic - part-by-part, step-by-step using established procedures that "worked", altering/improving them a bit every drawing. It's what helped me learn to draw, but after a certain point, it's just been holding me back. I got rid of "step-by-step" approach, embracing improvisation, quite a while ago, but I never really got rid of "part-by-part" mentality until this painting.

So yeah, it's pretty weird how one random doodle had that much impact. Don't underestimate random doodles.

Anyway, one deadline met, 6 more to go...