So, after a long delay and sitting on a stack of scanned files, we are back for Round 2 of the #SketchbookAdventures! We last left off with me having finally had something click that was missing for me in my ability to comprehend and execute the all-important task of foreshortening in my art.

So I spent a lot of time working on that. Sometimes my results were very shoddy, as you can see here:

But I quickly started to improve, and experimented with a lot of different poses to try to challenge myself. This has often been the point where I crumble against an attempt that doesn’t work out, demoralized y my lack of ability to get it 100% right on my first go. Illogical, i know.

But no matter how flummoxed I got, and still do get, by perspective and foreshortening, I had adopted the #NoLookingBack philosophy. I pushed forward and experimented with more complex  and energetic poses.

Action poses tended to be my favourite, because I knew that what I wanted to eventually draw were fight scenes. Energetic, frenetic, hectic. Combat in comics and animation tends to be what excites me the most. Surprisingly, I often found these easier to get closer-to-right than scenes of respite or repose.

A rigid looking posture can look powerful or it can look awkward, and getting the right kind of natural comfort in the human body when it is relaxed is super challenging.

Sometimes, when everything clicked, I would go into a lot more detail to see where the finished product would end up, and some of them ended up really, really, really good. Like my fictional Irish Kickboxer and MMA enthusiast Mac Hornbuckle, who has very expressive body language as he throws that groin-splittingly high kick.

Or like “Lady Crematorium” here, who genuinely feels relaxed in posture and expression. Working my way down to the explicit details in the way her dreadlocks move over the different layers underneath them was a fun experiment with my skill levels and made me love this design so much that I have been trying to find somewhere to slot her into my story ideas.

“Looking back” at your own art, to recognize that you have improved, is important. But one cannot get stuck on them, trying to constantly redo and improve and hit that 100% mark before doing something with them. We are all on a journey that moves us forward, and we will all improve as we keep moving. We will never hit a moment in our lives where we are perfect, and neither will our art. I’ve let my own self-doubt prevent me from trying things too often, that’s why I am sharing this and writing about my #NoLookingBack philosophy. In the hope that I might improve through recognizing flaws and moving forward and producing content while engaging with an audience.

I’m still waiting on that audience, by the way 🙂

Do you have any advice or questions? Please leave a comment here.

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