What do you do differently now?

[silacinnamon]

I changed my drawing habits a lot after having art and design classes, my teacher didn't let us use erasers so now I almost never erase anything when I'm sketching I also do a lot more thumbnails, colour studies etc before making a final decision, and I don't feel bad about using 12 billion references.

One thing I just started to do differently is to treat the drafts of my comics the same way I treat my drawing sketches: they don't need to be perfect, I can always redo them or skip one part and come back later to make it more detailed. But I still forget this and feel stuck bc I want it to be perfect right away, I'm working to get better at this

[Kann]

Early on I used to draw a lot on grid paper. Generally I made a lot of poor paper choices. xD

I learned to use colored pencils better, I use better stuff for linearts instead of cheap ballpoint pens I got smeared all over the drawing...

I stopped abusing so much layer modes. I mean, they're useful but too much is too much. xD

[teasidesketches]

High five! I tried to train myself to stop erasing so much by sketching in pens, so now I have the habit of sketching in ballpoint pens when I'm just doodling... but it worked, because I erase a lot less when doing actually illustrations, too!

I know how you feel about wanting things to look right the first time, though. It's a struggle, but as long as you're working through it and trying to remind yourself, that's what matters!

@Kann I feel like we've all had our grid paper phases. Why did we all decide to draw on grid paper, anyway?
Same with all the layer modes. But, they're just so great when you first discover them...

[Kiweevil]

I draw a lot less fanart and a lot more original art

[fleohr]

Not sure if it's only me, but I used to draw sitting in front of a computer for hours until I bought an iPad and started drawing laying down on my bed.

My arm hurts, but my butt doesn't so it's fine

[Iris-Grimoire]

I started actually drawing noses and ears instead of just the line, and also to sketch with coloring pencils if it's too complicated of a picture. Saved a lot of grief that last one!

[WriterLinXiaolong]

When I was younger, around 13-15 years old, I used to:

1) Write in first person pov
2) Write as I go without planning
3) Write with no research

Now that I am older (mid 20-ies cough), I:

1) Write in third person omniscient
2) Spend time outlining, planning and rough drafting
3) Spends time to do research before adding it to the story
4) Do first edit before publishing in wattpad for one of my project
5) 2nd edit before publishing in tapas (and other publishing platform).

[LCT_m_a_d]

I think of the sketch as the life and soul of the drawing. The sketch used to be just a placeholder idea before I rendered everything out, but now I treat the sketch as the most pure form of visual design and the details are just a way to share as much of the idea as possible with others.

I also feel a bit less like a visual artist now and more of a content creator

[nostalgicroxas]

I'm not too sure what I do differently... Like I know my writing's changed and evolved but my actual habits for it haven't changed too much really? I think at the least I've remained focused on one story as a commitment rather than jumping every few months or couple of years to a new thing. For drawing, I know I draw faster than I used to. An art that would take me 12hrs takes me 1 or 3 hours now. If the anatomy of the sketch is f-ed up then I don't spend forever trying to fix it. I try to fix it for a while, then quit and save it as a "well this was an attempt lolz" and try other sketches. I don't push through to make a crappy sketch something finished that I won't like cause I'll be unhappy the entire time.

[kaetana]

1) Ever since I got a tablet I do almost exclusively digital drawing...I have fairly shaky hands so being able to zoom in helps me get better line quality than I ever could drawing on paper haha
2) I got a lot better about using lots of references to help things look more accurate, including having dedicated folders for all my characters with face reference at lots of different angles (I'm kinda faceblind and before I started doing this, I could never draw a character's face the same way twice)
3) I've gotten gradually more bold with my shading, and working on trying to understand light from different directions rather than always doing the same directly from the front light I used to do

[GesuGesu]

Younger:
1) Draw eyes first, then rest of body
2) Either could only draw girls, or had a phase that I could only draw guys.
3) Actually tried pretty hard on originals with themes and composition
4) Traditional pencil, fineline, then pencil crayons on letter paper/sketchbook
5) Drew nearly once a day or more

Now:
1) Draw whole body sketch first, then fill in details
2) Draw anything for money. Guro, fetish, etc. I prefer drawing guys > girls in general
3) Usually draw people's OCs. Occasional fanart. Rarely original for the sake of original
4) 95% digital. I dislike wasting paper, so I avoid drawing on paper in the first place.
5) Draw maybe once every 2 months in bursts of 3-8 artworks at a time within a week.

[liann]

I realised I love the process more than the result so... no copy paste for me. But then again, I think I kinda slowed down when it comes to drawing because I'm starting to pay more attention to things.

[darthmongoose]

I had a lot of hangups when I was younger about doing things "properly", as if following some proper traditional artistic pipeline is what makes a person's art professional...

• I always drew on a drawing board with a sliderule and t-squares etc, painstakingly hand-drawing panels
• I worked in black and white, inked with fineliners or even dip pen
• If I had to draw an indoor scene, I drew a room plan and spent ages drawing out 3 point perspective guides.
• Only one pass of pencils, no fixes.
• Flipping? What's flipping?
• "I don't use digital textures or effects, they look mechanical" (aaaagh)
• Coloured using copic markers or washed out looking overlays on uninked pencils.

Of course, hearing what actual pros worked like was like "wait, what? They cheat!? Am I allowed to cheat!?" and so I embraced the mindset of: "If it's legal, it's not ripping off somebody else's art and isn't making the art look worse... DO IT" prioritising anything that makes the art fast to create and easy to edit (because oh boy, clients love them some changes...). Over years working in the industry, I've streamlined things a lot.

• Clip Studio is MVP. Using the panelling tools I drop in a 1-panel layout then use the panel cutter to make panels in seconds that automatically mask my lines to stay inside them.
• I pencil digitally, using as many layers of pencils as I need, flipping, and editing pieces to get things looking nice.
• I ink digitally using a nib tool I've customised to have expressive line weight far beyond anything I could ever get with real pens.
• For indoor and other hard environments I reference from 3D models to speed up the perspective drawing and to keep them consistent across pages
• Digital colours and use of (carefully chosen) digital textures if needed.
• Speech bubbles done using the shape tool in Photoshop so they're easy to edit, dropped into a folder with a stroke applied to everything in it so I can quickly copy-paste and edit bits to speed the process.

[Pandastrophic]

I don't enjoy creating illustrations as much as before.
I feel like all my good work is behind me and I haven't been able to move forward in a really long time.
My artblock has been so bad and I feel creatively bankrupt.
I used to create 3-4 illustrations per month and now I can barely finish just 1. Which is a problem because high-res illustrations and PSD files are a patreon reward and I always feel bad because I'm not giving patrons enough.
The above is mostly related to my illustrations, my current comic is the only thing I still enjoy working on and look forward to.

For the comic:
I used to lineart with pencil then I moved to digital since it's faster.
I used to draw backgrounds myself but then it was so time consuming and I started using photos instead, photos I take myself of streets, parks, public places, etc so now I have a large gallery of references and photos I can use freely.

[yansusu]

There's actually a lot more than I would have thought:
1. I switched from typing to speech-to-text (I had to because of health reasons and hated it at first but now I've gotten used to it)
2. I switched from writing traditional novels to web novels (so I don't finish whole volumes anymore before posting and people will have to live with a lightly edited first draft)
3. I switched from single PoV to multiple PoV

[CodeMonkeyArts]

I pretty now stick to purely digital since that is what I use to color my work. No more sketch books and stuff for me!

I also stopped caring what other people think-

...ahems I stop caring AS MUCH about what other people think and draw and share my art for my own amusement.

[AbelDraws]

• I'm actively trying to draw more and improve with backgrounds in general now (drawing a comic is the perfect excuse for that, you have to draw them even if you don't want to x'D)

• I also don't "paint" my drawings anymore. I get better results using a refined cell shading with gradients here and there to make sure the lights and atmosphere of the drawing look nice than spending a million hours painting the drawing x'D (This only happens because of my style tho, I absolutely love splash art-like drawings and they're painted, it just doesn't work as nice for my style atm. It's also way faster.)

• Regarding comics, I used to go head on and draw a few pages, find out I didn't like neither how things started nor what to do next and give up. The story I'm working on now is all planned from begining to end since some time ago and now I'm having a blast just worrying about how to tell the story the best way possible.

((Also this is my first time in the forum, hello

[xabelmind]

The best to draw laying down is a laptop with no-screen tablet, but you have to like drawing in no-screen tablet, of course Still, you can put it in your lap, so the laptop screen is in front of you while your arms are working down.

[xabelmind]

Have you considered close that Patreon tier, at least for some time, and do something different? When I feel stuck in one field, I use to go work in others. Maybe it would help

[spadesart]

for some reason i used to shade and lineart with a really thick airbrush and it made everything look kinda blurry and background details hard to incorporate. it took me way too long to realize thinner lines done with a solid/lightly textured brush look a lot better. i also used to make shadows SUPER dark and imo it makes older pages hard to look at. i still struggle with this but i think im doing better?