Confidence Acquired!

See this beautiful piece I did this week? This was a redraw of a piece I did ten years ago. I am super proud of this. Would you like to see why? Of course you do! At least I hope so if you're actually reading my blog. ^_^

Woo look at that DBZ hair! But more importantly, look at that progress. I was in a funk of not thinking I'd actually improved. I'm so glad that my friend Kuroi Tenshi had done her own 15-year comparison and thus inspired me to do the same, only with ten years since I've only be taking art seriously that long.

Okay I feel like I'm tooting my own horn here, but I'm super excited to see just how far I've come. I've been trying really hard to stop comparing myself to other people when it comes to many things, art included. Comparing myself to myself is the only way to go. And now I see how much I've grown.

Combine this with the help I received with drawing men and I feel so much more confident in my abilities. I was honestly afraid to move forward with my stories because I did not think I could do them justice. Yet I look at Firestorm and Andiago up there in their first incarnations and how they look now and I can't help but feel so excited to keep going.

Never let someone else's progress get in the way of your own. Never.

Holy Noseplosion Chiroptera Male!

Chiroptera = bat. So yes, the title is a reference to Batman. But I don't like Batman all that much, so Chiroptera Male!

Any way, I've been sick with an allergy-induced cold for the past few days (stupid vacuum cleaner being all full of dust and crap...), so I have had a lot of time to think about every story I have except the one I'm supposed to be working on. I seem to be really good at that.

But there is good news! I've finally broken my "drawing guys" block. One again, my character Bram from Lark Song, has helped me with that one. I've been putting off drawing him in his half- transformed werewolf form because it involves mostly naked man chest. I'm pretty terrible at that but it turned out really well. I'm still trying to figure out how to make the proper balance between a werewolf head with all that neck ruff and their legs which tend to seem soooo much smaller in light of the neck rough and manly muscular shoulders. Fem werewolves are so much easier in that respect since women have that lower center of gravity, thanks to wider hips.

Now I'm concerned that I won't be able to reproduce such good results, especially considering the next male character on the list is a Japanese dragon man who is based off a friend of mine (and my hubby's) who is decidedly not Japanese (whom we call King of the Wild Frontier. You can find his blogs here: http://caseybutlerkingofthewildfrontier.blogspot.com and here: http://parachutepete.blogspot.com  Visit him. Love him!). I'm also not well versed in dragon drawing in general, let alone the Eastern varieties. Lungs are decidedly different than the European wyrm-style ones. And that's just the beginning. I also have to design a rock golem man, a volcano golem man and three werewolf children, another weakness of mine.

And those are just the main characters. There's all kinds of other lychanthropes in this story of mine, from something as simple at a were-elephant, to horrible composite creatures that eat people. What have I gotten myself into?

Well I can at least show y'all the good things that I have done so far, excluding anything of Lark because those would spoil the whole plot. Pardon the crappy cell phone images. At least that means people are less likely to filch my work. So yeah, no stealing my brain children.

This is Drew in her normal form. I gained a lot of confidence having drawn her.

Here is Alfa. Isn't she cute?

And here is the wolf-man who gave me so much trouble. He's not done yet.