That way lies only pain and repetition. You need to break your bad habits. Trust me.

There is a point where you have to declare a thing 'done' and leave it though. You sound as if you are just going to keep going over the same piece again and again until your hands bleed.

Sketches are supposed to be loose, and bad. Can't fix the anatomy without erasing half of it? Start again with the knowledge of what went wrong. Otherwise you keep doing the same thing over and over and your art becomes stale and, as you said earlier, no fun at all to do.

that is a good start. Keep moving.

I am aware there is a limit for some people but the idea is to push against that limit.

You did ask for advice on how to make it feel less hard. The best way to change how doing a thing feels is by changing how you go about doing it. If you try everything you might just find a way that feels amazing and go 'hey now, why didn't I do this long ago?'. You find your shortcuts and your scenic routes.

You're off to a good start by trying a different thing. *thumbs up*

Goodo! There are plenty of good tutorials out there that might provide you another idea too. When it doubt, observe another artist.

Good! Youtube is also good, and tumblr has a bunch of good stuff under #art tutorial

That's where right click > save image comes in 8D
Make own filing system!

I don't think it's wrong of Fuu-chan to want to strive for her idea of perfection?
I'm the same... I tend to just stop drawing/and or restart if I'm not able to get it how I want it to look (which is what I would deem as perfect, or as best as I can produce, but when I return in after awhile, the artwork looks hideous [lol])

For example, i can say I'm happy with my sketch and it looks as perfect as I imagined it

I think perfection is a loose term.
it's more of the viewer's interpretation of perfection at that point in time
it may not necessarily mean that the art has the most perfect anatomy or colors

once you come back and realize your mistake wasn't perfect, you learn to avoid it in order to create "perfection" again.

of course, just my feeble opinion. XD shrinks away

I recommend you invest in either a shitton of flashdrives with sticky labels on them or get an external hard drive. I have two externals, one with old craptacular art from nine years ago and some other non art junk like tvshows and music, and one EXCLUSIVELY for my art resources.

I was taught that going over, removing 'bad' bits, was not a good thing to do. You would lose something precious and indescribable by working the one picture too much. So you made another one with the corrections you wanted and compared the two. Do it over from the top and learn what went wrong the first time.

Plus it's super bad to over work a canvas, press board, or paper. Wooden board not so much. You damage it and that shows through in the final piece so horribly.

Save up dood. I saved for a year to get my first external.

@Fuu-Chan
twins! <333
yess. at those times, I almost always go into an art block. 8(

@OnYourGoat
Ooh, I can understand that perspective. It's like taking out the raw part of it. [nod]
Which is quite important for a lot of art pieces. Though, I have a hard time defining between those types of artwork and just character art. (Which is what I do most of the time, rather than portraits, landscapes, abstract, etc)


Oooh, I didn't know that! I remember my art teacher just letting us reuse canvases XDD
Of course using gesso or something to even it out. I'm sure it's not the same result as a fresh clean canvas.
Though it makes me wonder if an artist has intentionally painted over their work to convey such a feeling of loss?

I do a loooot of portraiture and life captures (subject going about their day) so I often end up with up to fifty sketches of their face or ears or posture before I even begin the painting itself. Then you need a separate set of thumbnails for composition and all sorts. When I work on non-portraiture I can get there faster but the best way I've found to work to the final is to keep every fuck up along the way.
Then once you've finished you can throw out the worst ones or use the backs or feed them to your hamster. Keep the little bits you like and keep at least three stages.
It's also a great way to boost your morale, going back to old scraps and seeing how you've improved over the years.