Recently moved and in doing so I went through my pile of work...and like any good spring cleaner would do in the middle of winter I evaluated to suckopotamus factor on several of the items I thought I wanted to save. Not that I didn't learn stuff from the hulking pile of pooh...but I just hated them...and I'm sure as I look at other items I will delete them too...there is only so many times I can look at some of the things and say to myself "what was I thinking"...I mean I know everyone produces a junker now and then...and when you're 'sketching' or just fooling around with compositional items that it happens because of problem solving...but these item were intentional...just not intentionally bad...so like a penguin purging its gullet I trashed a bunch of stuff...
styracosaurus head in pointillism...burnt...I found out that trying to do pointillism on a smaller scale wasn't working for me...for a head 10x15 seems to be the right size...but the small size looked just goofy and sophomoric...when I compare it to my first effort it is clear the severe drop in quality...
my triceratops hunching on it's back legs...used to scrape barnacles from a canoe...I worked bigger but the details were smaller...and that tree...I tried to make it look like bark had been stripped away from a larger herbivore...I don't know what happened...but I know once you start with a plan using ink and dots it had better work cause there ain't no goin' back...I like parts of the tree...I like the pose...but it just doesn't pull together...maybe with some watercolor? Maybe if I had stuck with graphite...maybe if frogs had wings....the really funny part is someone begged me for this picture...but I couldn't stand the thought that years down the road they would let it slip that it was my work...I have enough bad work that I didn't trash with my name attached.
This item that I am STILL working on (it is taking forever) looks less cartoony and if I don't screw it up along the way I might feel better about it...provided the illo board doesn't turn to dust. But again it seems like a much higher quality.
Of course this even had its own special terd origin...thankfully the illustration board was thick enough that it protected me during a ninja attack....but I'm equally as grateful the work died in the process...
This item I did as an exercise with regards to a description based on the chupacabra...I liked the idea but hated the results...I was just trying to throw in some landscape to get it done...and it shows...
The head shot I like much better...but mostly because of the chicken...that may be my finest chicken drawing moment...it almost makes me want to draw another chicken...what happened to the full body picture? Dog scoop...if you know what I mean...
And who could forget this monstrosity...which I swore I would cut the eye out and bury the rest...and I did...
After doing this junker I managed to pull out this one...which made me infinitely happier...
Then there is the grandaddy of them all...
I really had good intentions with this...it was a really neat assignment based on using a whale skull that was found and people were trying to guess what it was...but once I got the figures done I was hoping to do some background work...maybe if I had tried to jazz it up into a pop-work piece of art then I could have made it into something classically bad...you know...like a good godzilla movie...instead it is just bad bad...and it sat in my closet looking at me with its awkward stare of disappointment, begging me to put it out of its misery...so I did...I used it as a sled on a half mud-half snow hill...
This colored pencil item made me much happier even without dinos...seemed to be much better planned and complete...
The good news is that I think I've grown...I got to explore some different media and found a couple of things I like to do, so it wasn't entirely a waste. Here's to a new year and to hoping that as long as we're still around that we all get better and more honest so that we can grow. Looking forward to more inspiration from those around me and the hope that I will get better with perseverance and hard work.
