Throwing away old sketches?

[Luie]

Okay so this is a really bad crazy phenomenon that I have yet to crack. No joke, I turn my unwanted sketches into backyard bonfires. It smells really bad but it's cooler to watch than waiting for the trash man. Every round of fire papers, I always keep the ones I don't hate yet. This is a mere fraction of the paper I have used and the drawings I've drawn. Today, I have over 1500 of them lodged away in binders. These are all the sketches over the past 10 years that have survived my paper abuse. This is a fraction compared to the ones I've burned. Sometimes I wonder just how many drawings I've drawn so far, or what would happen if ?I kept them all.

I recommend scanning them into a digital album and throwing the physical paper away if you really want to keep everything. Keep just a few physicals, they add up. If you want to burn them, only burn a few at a time or they'll smell really bad (but they make cool flames) so do it in your backyard. It's fun n stuff.

Oh, also! After a few years, compile your old sketches into a progress video! =D

[Aloredd]

That sounds like something my 7th grade teacher did, except for writing! He gave us a prompt and we had to write a story based on it, with a minimum of 15 pages, and no cap. He had to tell me to stop writing, even though he really liked the story (A friend and I competed to see who could write the longer story....I won)

[akaCheezy]

I save all my sketches more so I can look over them for stupid, old ideas that didn't work at the time but could still have some promise. It becomes a good place to go for inspiration almost.

[kazukitakamura126]

I cannibalized old ideas into new stories too many times. They became stagnant to me.

[kazukitakamura126]

I have my old binders of comics dating back to 2006 in a storage unit. My brother and I have maybe 2 or 3 boxes worth of binders with comics in them. For my digital work, I usually delete them so I can save space for projects I will actually be working on.I only have one comic on my laptop that is discontinued and stashed away in a folder.

[Chopythes]

@Luie: Yeah, when I lived back home at my parents house I burnt the ones I didn't like (only when mum wasn't around because she wanted to save ANYTHING I made and I wasn't happy with that, haha!) in the fire place.
But only the ones I really didn't like at all, and was ashamed of even looking at.

A progress video sounds really interesting tho! Thanks for the tip!

[phoenixrenaissance]

It's kinda, impossible for me to throw away old art. Luckily most o it is in sketchbooks so it's not all that hard to keep things tidy. I've got a giant bin for my art school era things as well as a filing cabinet for all my comic pages.
I probably could just scan everything and keep it digitally, but there's just something about actively flipping through a sketchbook that feels so much more nostalgic and fun.

[Doubtcent]

I don't throw any away, but some do get misplaced.
I still have my first sketchbook (which was just a regular notebook). I like to see how far I've gotten because I personally don't see my improvement from page to page unless I look back. Only when I look at monstrosities that at the time I thought were amazing do I really see how far I have walked down the road of art.
I mean, I got away with some really stupid looking stuff. Now I can say that I am an accomplished, greenhorned, ameteur.

I also like to look back and get inspiration from my older creations. Even though I didn't have the skill, I was dang imaginative.

[ponytaponyboy]

Hmm.... I'm a hoarder, I tend to keep everything, be it digital files or traditional papers.
I keep real life and digital folders full of my drawings, and I try to keep it neat and organized, haha. I also have an external hard drive in which I store my scans, sketches, etc.

I do get rid of some of them though... the ones I'm least proud of LOL

[SpavVy]

I throw a good chunk of them away, I don't really care much for seeing how my work looked back then. It's nice seeing how much I improved and all but I don't really have the room for all my old stuff because I'm working on a long running comic and I live in a two bedroom apartment. >.< still trying to figure out where I'm going to store all my pages...

[Chopythes]

@phoenixrenaissance: Yeah, that's the thing I love too, the feeling when you flip through the papers, you won't get that when you're looking through it on the computer D:

[TristanJensen]

I tend to keep all of them in my room until it gets to the point where I have no choice but to pitch em...
(something like that...)

But there are a few I keep because I really liked them, but thats a fairly small percentage of them (60% or so)