Here's an early Wild Nights, Hot & Crazy Days image. Note the lack of lighting and/or shading and the background with no detail at all. I was just getting back into drawing and was still at MS Paint skill level. Not that there is anything wrong with MS Paint: I have created some pretty cool stuff using it, but it has few tools. I actually drew this using Krita but hadn't figured out the tools yet.
...And here's a later Finding Daecon's Way. Note the detail in the background and the lighting/shading on the foreground. Leaves on trees, ripples on the water, textures on the skin (including freckles and scars)
I can actually offer true "Apples to apples" comparisons, too. Since I've figured out how to actually do these things I've been going back and redoing the older images.
An old Wild Nights, Hot & Crazy Days in original format. This scene took place in the cafeteria of a K-Mart in the mid 1980's:
Same scene, updated. In addition to the shading & textures on the characters I also decided to include the actual 1980's K-Mart. This one was actually an early "new" version, I had just figured out lighting & shadows but hadn't figured out that I could actually do these things on layers. This was done "flat", all on one layer:
