Reflect on your progress and give yourself props

I like looking back at my older stuff to witness my evolution. Certainly I'm no FP genius yet, but I'm so happy with my progress. It also made me realize that I need to make waaaay more effort to get stuff photographed because my even my newer pics are months to over a year old.

Please share your progress pics too.

I think this was my first butterfly:


Even my quick, lopsided line work b-fly is way better:


First cheetah:


Current cheetah:


Spidy then:


Spidy more recent:


Skull then:


Skulls more recent:


color=orange]My first tiger: (LOL, I was working with another painter who was offering tigers, so I jumped in and tried it thinking, oh, that doesn't look so hard....yeh right)[/color]


Again even my current, quick line work tiger beats the crap outta my first which took me FOREVER to finish:


And lastly, I don't have any pics of my first AWFUL attempts at leopards, but believe me, they were as laughable as my tiger.
Here's the one I did most recently:

(one of my first monsters)
( few years later)
(a ok tiger eye)
v ()
my photos are still older but, eh it is fun to look at the difference in time.

old eye design

newer eye design

Right on Krissiemarie! Don't you love it? I also love looking back on designs that I thought were REALLY good and now, I'm like wow, that wasn't that good lol.

I agree. And I still look at some of my recent paintings and think the same thing, but I guess thats an artist's thing because we are our own worst critics

Wow Krissiemarie!!! You're first monster was still pretty damn good!

Here's my then-and-now tiger.


Then-and-now kitty


Ever-changing butterfly


Then-and-now flower

Vinnie,
How awesome, your pics show that you always had an eye for detail work and honed in on how to make the designs pop. I agree that you and Krissiemarie both started off great and just got better.

Ummmm, I feel like my "now" pics are about as good as some of your "then" pics! LOL!

How long have you been in it Christina? I started this journey in Aug 2009, so you can see how fast good changes can come.

Thank you CreateFaces

OMG! I get excited looking at my old work versus my new work. Here are a few from old and new, many on the same models
Before


After


Before


After


Before


After

Katurah, you're so young, so I must ask, how long have you been painting? I love your style and it's obvious that you have a knack for unique detailing, nice work!

CreateFaces wrote:Katurah, you're so young, so I must ask, how long have you been painting? I love your style and it's obvious that you have a knack for unique detailing, nice work!

thank you! I love your work too! I think we all have come a long from where we first began, it's awesome to see!

I've been painting since March of last year, sooo almost a year (it's crazy a difference a full year can make), I can't wait to see what will happen in the next year!

Katurah, Fantastic! Can't wait to see you blow us all out of the water next year if you are already showing that much skill in less than a year.

I know you didn't ask, but if I may offer advice:

You are no doubt checking out every source for FP tips, ideas and inspiration and possibly attending an FP workshop or two. As a result, you'll gain knowledge & experience and fall into a style that you're comfortable with and probably stick to it because it works for you.

Here's the advice part: Whenever you get into a comfortable groove, go back and reflect on all the things you saw, admired and learned from, it will challenge you to get even better. After 3 years, I'm just starting to do this.

I've been in a comfortable groove, but not really doing anything new, now I'm getting bored and looking for inspiration.

I went back and searched for pics from workshops I attended, web tutorials I had bookmarked, notes I had written and my sketches for design ideas. There's so much valuable information there but I had basically discarded it because once I developed techniques and styles that worked for me, I didn't feel I needed to reference the other stuff anymore.

Another thing I found was my old references to techniques I tried but got discouraged about when I first started that now I'm like, "Oh yeah, I need to do that!"

Good luck and I look forward to seeing more of your work!

Thank you Cheryl!!