Do you keep your old art?

[NickRowler]

I keep almost all of my old art. I did at one point throw out some stuff but now I sort of regret it.
My parents have something I made when I in Preschool (so I was 4 or 5). The oldest thing I own on hand is a picture from Kindergarden where I attempted to draw the play-set in my backyard from memory but then messed up the whole pic by accidentally coloring the wall around the yard sky blue.

I started to draw a lot more in 4th grade, so here is some stuff from my late elementary years

Age 10. Rose the Cat. Personality: female.

Also age 10. Weird Sonic inspired character.

Age 11. Original character, do not steal

Age 12. OK, this character with the purple face sort of inspired these characters

I was sort of fascinated from an early age by the concept of birthmarks and skin mutations (another reason why almost all of my comics has an albino person).

[Moineau]

This is the first comic I drew back in 2014

Here is what it looks 2 years later

[AoDLegacy]

I keep a lot of my old works, kinda for nostalgia and rehashing of old ideas in case I need extra inspiration. It's always nice to see how far I've come from my roots. It's really quite shocking the amount of improvements I've made in just a year frankly. I'm not quite comfortable with necessarily publishing all of my old stuff, as some of it is almost embarrassingly bad.

Example of my old art:

Same character, done in recent times.

[scullpanda]

2011-

2012-

2013-

2015-

2016-

Way too much of it

[WakaXO]

I used to have all my art going back YEARS but after a few moves I have purged a lot of it, though I did transfer a lot of it onto my computer before I trashed it.
This isn't the oldest pic I have, but its one of the older ones (I think its from around 2007?);

And this is one of my newer pics;

[Tieback]

I used to keep EVERYTHING. However, earlier this year, I made the choice to simplify my life after reading the book The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo. I went through everything I owned and got rid of many things. I choose to throw away or gift most of my old artwork. I only kept a series of framed Lithographs and two sketchbooks. Still no regrets.

[Silerna]

I keep everything. Even my old notebooks from first school. It's fun to look at!

I drew this when I was 10. Portrait of my teacher xD

VS now.

[SynergyEclipse]

I keep most of my old art as far back as 6th grade, but may still have some drawings from as far back as kindergarten. The only times I haven't were when I needed to clear out some physical space, but I'd scan drawings first to keep a digital copy. Several years ago, I lost all of my digital artwork I had in a hard drive failure. The computer didn't crash or stop working, but I suddenly lost everything on it, and there were no backups or printed copies.

[Silerna]

Oh that really sucks. Did the hard drive just stopped working? Since I had that with one a few years ago, ever since that happend I keep a back-up from my works on a external harddisc.

[shaneoid77]

Yup I'm very sentimental, I have boxes full of my old stuff. I think ideas which you had as a youngster are still as valid, even more so because it came from a fertile and naive mind. This is a character I created in about 1992 (left) and his modern update I've plopped in my comic. If I were setting out to do a comic from scratch these days, I would never have conceived of a cyborg goat man, but using my old-young mind I have this guy in my pantheon of characters!

[mac]

I have a few sketchbooks and things from the 7th grade that i still have. ive been redrawing certain pictures overtime

[NickRowler]

I did actually redraw the angel boys pic (I guess I forgot about it when I made my first post)

[hisameartwork]

Well since my art gets stolen when I post it on the internet and then tossed around until it appears on Amazon merchandise I now make an effort to keep the psd, should I ever need to prove ownership.

This horrible drawing of mine from 8 years ago resurfaced and won't go away. Amazon told me they took it down, but here it still up. :))

So kids, know that art gets stolen and nobody really cares. So at least put up good stuff that when it gets stolen (and it will) at least you'll not be embarrassed by it :))

https://www.amazon.com/hisame-Mouse-Pad-Mousepad-inches/dp/B00WQRR85U/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1478124383&sr=8-1&keywords=hisame

[Tanimation]

I keep all my art through the years in an portfolio.

The earliest I have is from 2008 or 2009. Earlier than that is lost in time somewhere.

[SirGutsalot]

I found a drawing I did when I was 3 years old of some sort of character I made up back then, so I decided to revamp him in my style now - it was fun!

[briadawson2014]

I have so many old, crappy drawings from middle school of original stuff I was working on at the time that carried on today in my current comics. This one is of Jules back in like 08 or so. This is him now in a sketch from earlier this year. He has changed drastically and I've improved greatly over the years.

[ToxicRamen]

I still have alot of my old artwork during my high school and college years. I got rid of my artwork from my middle school years because my mom didn't like the clutter...But I would usually scan artwork that's worth keeping digitally.

[AtaraxiaStudios]

I always keep old sketchbooks. I like to think it's so I can refer to old ideas I might've had, but I think I just have a touch of OCD (:

[SynergyEclipse]

It still worked afterwards. It's such a good idea to keep a backup drive, which I didn't think about until years later. I've been lucky I haven't had another hard drive failure since then.

[jennula]

I keep my old art, but I think I've tried to scan in a lot of my reeeeeally old art because I drew a lot as a kid. I can share some fantsy character design I probably did around 97-98 (yes, almost 20 year old art. I am old):

And here's a more recent image I tinkered around with a few weeks ago:

It's kinda weird to compare two different pics, someday I'd love to just re-draw one of my really old images just for fun =)