Personal development (draw this again)

Yes today we are talking about personal development, but not of the emotional kind.

Today I am focusing on the development of technical skill. Personally I am never truly 100% pleased with my artwork. I won't allow myself to be, because the moment you do you become complacent. My goal is to  keep learning, keep improving and keep working hard for as long as I live. I love to learn and I have always strived to become a better artist, or a better person or a better, well everything. So naturally every once in a while it is nice to see how far you've come.

Below you can see two images. The first one is an older illustration of mine. I made it a couple of years ago, and it was one of my first completely digital illustrations.

This week I decided to remake it in the spirit of Deviantarts current "draw this again" contest. The whole point of the contest was to choose and old image from your own Deviantart gallery and draw it again. I thought this sounded like a great challenge for me, and it would also allow me to see how much my skills had improved since I made the original Illustration.

As you can see the two illustrations have the same original design, but the details and the colors differ vastly.
I decided to create a greater contrast between the background and the pendant. In the first version the pendant had a golden color very similar to that of the background and seemed to blend in with it a bit. In the new one however I feel that the pendant pops more. Also the new version is more polished, and neat. The details are more refined and there is actually a proper background. In the original version I got the feeling that the necklace was just floating in thin air, but in the new version it is placed on a background of silk. This gives the image more visual interest and puts the necklace into context, it actually belongs somewhere now.


I could probably bore you with more details, but lucky for you I won't do that.

What I am going to do is encourage you to try this experiment for yourselves. How far have you come in the past two or three years? Have you pushed yourself? Have you been slacking? If you have improved vastly was it because you had a goal to do so or is it more happenstance? To find out do the challenge ;)

Until next time
Anita K. Olsen

website:
www.anitaolsen.daportfolio.com
 
contact:
anitaolsen.illustration@gmail.com