My Improvement Over the Years

 At the beginning of every year since 2018, I have created a drawing of the character Sheik from the The Legend of Zelda series of games looking into the night sky. I have done this as a way to track the progress of my skills as well as to contemplate the ways which I can develop my drawing skills for years to come.

The drawing above is the very first drawing of the series which I had created in January 2018, The picture lacks color, a sense of highlight/shadows, and portrays inaccurate proportions along with a few other problems. At the time this was one of my best works, though nowadays I truly understand its glaring flaws.

For 2019, There was an improvement when it came to the detail and shading of the piece though the figures still had a more stiff appearance along with the inaccurate proportions which plagued the first one.

 Rather than sticking to the more traditional materials of pencil and paper, 2020's drawing was done digitally on ibisPaint X. This new format allowed for the inclusion of vibrant colors, though since I was still getting used to drawing digitally at the time the shading and use of color on the piece was flawed in some areas (such as the use of the color black for shading).

By the end of 2020, I had developed a greater understanding of how to draw digitally as many of the errors from the past (Ex: the use of color and [for the most part] proportions) had been fixed. The largest downside to this piece in my opinion was the the lack of many interesting background elements seen in past versions.

Lastly, for the most recent 2022 version, I had returned to the overall look of the original 2018 piece, but obviously taking the many things I've learned over the years to create something that looks far more elegant and complete. 

The original inspiration for the piece came to me after I had come across artwork from a user named Keri Newberry on Pinterest. I just loved the sense of silence and mystery which the artist had displayed in their piece, and I was very familiar with the characters shown.

With that said, Keri's piece was itself inspired by a very similar shot from the video game Super Smash Bros. Melee (the specific sequence is at 0:48 in the video)

                                                (the specific sequence is at 0:48 in the video)

Compared to the art made by Keri Newberry, I have developed a style that's more "realistic" in a way compared to the more cartoon/anime style which they had expressed. My unique style seemed to have engendered mostly during the year 2020 as the extra time I had due to the pandemic gave me more time to experiment with my drawing, more specifically, with my portrait drawing. In the first half of the year I drew figures is more exaggerated features (mostly when it came to the eyes) but after using actual images of my friends/family as references, my style became more real in the second half of 2020 and beyond.

Nowadays, whenever I draw a fictional character, the textures and shading of the picture are more detailed than the source material such as when I created a drawing of the character Sephiroth from the game Final Fantasy VII. 

Often times I attempt to go back to a more cartoony style as shown in my earlier drawings of Sheik, but currently that is more difficult for me as I seem to have a more established style.

There's still much more improvement I could make when if comes to my future yearly checkpoint drawings, such as cleaning up the look of the clothes that I draw and creating more unique and diverse backgrounds for each piece. Overall, I'm pleased with my progression as an artist in the past few years and hope to continue in my growth.