What do you do differently now?

[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?

[Shanny8]

I almost never completely filled a sketchbook page

This. I finally finished one sketchbook about 6 years ago- and started working on 2 more(one is a small one that I can stick in my bag and carry with me; the other is a large one that I drag around to conventions and scribble in it when I'm in lulls between selling stuff)...I've currently slowed down on scribbling in my sketchbooks over the last couple of years- even moreso since I've gotten into a lot of digital scribbling. A lot of my sketchbooks are just that- sketching and drawing/inking; I never do full color pieces in a sketchbook.

When I was doing comic work traditionally I never cared for erasing on the bristol; I'd do all my erasing in thumbnails, then blow them up(via copier) and do the final pencils(via lightbox) in non photo blue pencil, then ink right over it. The blue line would not show up during printing, this became a "way of life/process" for me.

My biggest thing is I try not to waste a lot of energy when drawing/inking/making comic pages. It might be because I'm older and I dont have a ton of energy like I used to, but when I do start working on stuff I'm always trying to find a way to do a thing quicker/faster with the least amount of energy...I do it even more now days with the all the arm issues I've been having on and off for the past couple years.

@fleohr just now starting to get used to doing art on my iPad. Only obstacle I have right now is that I need to "convert" a couple of PS brushes to CSP brushes so that I can exclusively work in Clip Studio on my iPad.

[fleohr]

I would have tried that lmao, but my drawing tablet is quite large and I use shortcuts pretty much a lot too.

That's why I'm use procreate, the gestures and UI made my life so much easier

[fleohr]

Oof, I also had this problem when I switched to iPad, so I'm using default brushes on Procreate. Not sure about clip studio paint, since I've never used it, but I heard on Procreate 5 you will be able to convert .abr easily to .brush and other nice things

(I feel like I'm promoting procreate lol. No paid promotion tho)

[375]

One of the things I never did was actually took a step back from my stories and asked myself how could this be better? And by doing this, I can see what was wrong with the story and why it felt forced. Such as for example, I wrote Love Me Hate Me in third person before hand but didnt really like the way it felt so I switched it up and wrote it in first person. If I was still the person I was years ago, I would've dropped the entire project itself!

[Rhonder]

My post in this thread is a good point of comparison:

The current "version" of these characters (they had existed prior to this but were considerably different) was this illustration from 2010: [image] and now they look like this: [image][image][image] Really, not too much changed at the core. The biggest removals were just toning the outfits down to be less over-designed and like the hair styles LOL (and obviously just being better at drawing in general now). Regarding Rudolph, he's an older OC as well but I think I only had like... 2 or 3…

The biggest stylistic change that I'm really happy with is that I like... used to be allergic to thick lines LOL I had a role model on deviant art when I was a kiddo whose copic marker tutorials I would read, and part of their style that they talked about was using ultra thin fineliners when doing their inking because they were really detail oriented and would add all sorts of intricate decorations and such in their drawings. I loved how they turned out so I tried to mimic that for a long time. The problem is, my style is really really different from theirs LOL varying line weights from thin to thick really suit my drawings more I think. Pretty much 100% of my drawings prior to like 2 years really lack oomph and have weak line work as a result... as can be seen in the pic from 2010 in the linked post.

Another recent change (only started doing this as of beginning my comic last year) is starting to shade with colors other than just darker versions of the same color. Like instead of shading a green with darker green, I've started taking the environment into consideration. Like if it's night time, try shading with some dark blues. If there's dry grass everywhere, dark yellows, etc. So far it helps more often than it hurts, I think.

[Mari]

My writing used to be a lot more hectic. Now it's just.Pauses.Everywhere.So.Many.Pauses.

With art I have not literally improved a single bit since 2013.

[Luminosophy]

I plan out my drawings now and it's made me so much faster. I use geometry construction method and a bastardized version of loomis heads for each figure. Takes out allllll the guesswork. \ o /

[Cavechan]

Well I switched to digital a couple years ago so that is the biggest thing I do differently. :3

[sekabead]

I used to draw my characters putting their hands in the pocket to avoid drawing fingers.

Not anymore! Now I draw their hands hiding behind their back

[lorphis]

Uh... I'm more productive. Ever since I got featured my webcomic on webtoon got a huge jump of subscribers. It certainly motivated me. I even managed to finish one page every day for 3 days straight.

[ben]

I used to try and work completely digitally because I thought I had to but then I realized most of the people whose work I liked didn’t even work fully digital so I switched back and it’s been 100% more enjoyable for me. I can actually draw everyday and finish things in a timely manner as opposed to trying to finesse one little thing over the course of a week or two.

I also have kind of stopped using sketchbooks. There’s something about them that makes them feel like I’m supposed to do something presentable on every page even though I fully believe a sketchbook should be kinda unfettered with those conceits n you gotta have a space for pure experimentation w/o the fear of someone flipping through it. I started using just pocket sized muji notebooks and use them for sketches, doodles, to do lists, quick ideas, note taking (if I’m at the movies or hanging out with friends), recipes, quick journaling, etc. If there’s a good piece of artwork or writing in it then I just move it to a real project and let it live outside of the notebook.

The notebook change was really one of the biggest, most important things for me. Because I’m constantly putting in ideas in it, messy or otherwise, I haven’t really had to think about what I have to or want to work on because it’s all right there. There’s all these ideas and thoughts I thought were dumb when I wrote them down but then might apply to a project the next week or month or year. It’s wildly useful.

When I look back at when I’ve kept proper sketchbooks there’s usually all these drawings I tried to make look nice but they don’t benefit me nearly as much as how I keep notebooks now.

[Iris-Grimoire]

I second using the notebook/sketchbook to free the mind instead of making it a chore. School kinda hammered on me that I just had to make the studies all pretty because it'd be in a museum one day and... Tough luck, if someone picks it up they'd make weird interpretations no matter what I put on it. If I have an idea for a page, a weird character design came into mind, or I just want to write down numbers or brands to check out later, it's all in the same place, and I actually started filling them in once I got used to it.

[gempompadour]

I used to color my illustrations traditionally but nowadays do it all digitally, even the lineart. I'm still uncomfortable doing the whole pic digitally but maybe sometime in the future that'll change.

[Hodge]

Before I didn't do enough studies, now I do too many.

Also, I don't listen to podcasts, lectures, interviews, audiobooks, etc. when I work now. I need all the brain power I can get so I only really listen to music now,

[nostalgicroxas]

Gosh you people who do sketchbooks and pencils... Man I hate pencils. I use them with the intent to ink and erase them and then get mad if the pencil dented my paper. Which happens a lot. I quit using pencils to doodled and sketch back in ..... urgh.... 2000? That's one reason why an adjustment to digital was fine for me because the idea of something being permanent and then being able to just lower the opacity on the layer, just was natural to me. It's also why a lot of my doodles and sketches are "meh it's done" after one pass. That mentality of it's ink, can't erase, has stuck with me and I don't know if that's good or bad but it's allowed me to draw with unforgivable mediums like sharpies, crayons and colored pencils without graphite underneath.

[hannahlaine]

You are super helpful and give a lot of great advice! Plus, your art and stories are amazing! I love your work and hope I can be half as good as you are one day!

[Larslaustsen]

This is different...