It has been awhile since I last published an article. I want to say that it was because I am busy with school works but that would only be partly true. The truth for the most part is that I was losing my spark with writing (again). The idea of publishing an article daily is nice but I know that I can publish 30 articles in 2 weeks so I thought "why force myself to write bad articles when I can wait when I am in the mood again?" Of course, this mindset did not stop me from writing articles that I will edit someday to make them more readable.

This article is the third part of a series of articles that I published featuring my past artworks. The first one is about my try at traditional portraits. The second one is about some of my watercolor paintings that I absolutely adore. The last one will be about my digital art journey and some of my plans for the future regarding art.

Mobile Digital Arts

When I started my digital art journey, I was using a Samsung Note 2 with a cracked screen to draw. It was cracked because I accidentally let go of it on the way to getting a screen protector (Yeah, I know. It is sad.). But the phone was still usable so I made do with what I had.

The best thing that I like about this hone is that it has a stylus which makes the process much easier than if I were to draw with just fingers. The first art application I used when making digital art is called "Sketch". You can find that one on the Google Play Store although it is not something that I recommend for artists who want to do complex artworks. It is a simple application with good brushes but I think it only has one layer available. I cannot remember for sure but there is a reason why I am no longer using that app.

My Artwork using Sketch app

As I was starting out, I was more drawn into drawing landscapes and backgrounds than doing portraits. Back then, I thought that there is nothing interesting about painting people. This is just one of the artworks I made because I want to keep the others for myself. But if you are interested to see more, I think I posted them on Tumblr too, under the same username.

I made this one on New Year's Day. I vaguely remember feeling alone when my cousins and sisters fell asleep after the countdown so I was left staring at the sky. There were a lot of trees in the province so I incorporated them into this painting.

As you may notice from this, it is obvious that I do not give much consideration to the details of the artwork, instead, I opted to focus more on the larger picture quite the contrary to my style today wherein I just do not know when to stop adding details.

What's next?

What happened next is that I stopped using my Samsung phone because my mother gave me an Oppo F3+ on my birthday so I started using that. The con about using a new phone is that it does not come with a stylus so I have to learn how to use my fingers to paint. The pros of it are that it has a larger storage and larger space to work with.

When I changed my phone, I had already totally stopped using the Sketch app and instead switch to Medibang Paint and IbisPaint X. I am not entirely sure which one I used for the following artworks though.

Digital Artworks using fingers

This is also the time that I started making some fan arts. Since I was just starting out, I was borrowing free pose bases from Tumblr.

The base for this one is clearly noticeable. I believe this is the first artwork I made on Medibang Paint. I remember being so amazed at how amazing the brushes work so I made a few more fan arts.

For this one, I was trying out a lesson I learned about color theory. It was about not using black for shadows or just picking the darker shade of the base color. The tip was to use a warmer or cooler shade too to add more depth. Obviously, as a beginner, it did not turn out as clean as it could be. However, for past-me, this is one of my most adorable fan art.

If you cannot tell, it is a fan art of a crack ship from Naruto- GaaSaku (Gaara and Sakura). I made this after reading a fanfic about the two of them and I just found the two of them so adorable that I had to draw them together.

This actually something that I used in my profiles for a long time. At the time, I really liked using the color green for my paintings and this is the one that made me so proud.

The painting above and this one is a few years apart. This is one of my early fan art for Jisoo. I think it looks okay but I am not totally satisfied with it which pushed me into focusing on digital art when I can.

Upgrading my drawing tools

When I reached college, I was able to buy a laptop with my stipend for the first semester. I mainly used it for engineering applications that we used like AutoCAD along with some coding applications. Once the pandemic hit, I was finally able to buy a pen tablet with my next stipend. The tablet I bought is not the best one there is but it was enough for what I need. I mainly use my Huion HS64 tablet, Adobe Photoshop, and Clip Studio Paint for my artworks recently.

Within months of practicing, I have finally achieved something that I am proud of at the same time having fun when I was doing it. This is the artwork that I think I will be most proud of for the next few months to come. It is a fan art of Kim Jisoo from BLACKPINK's DDU-DU DDU-DU music video.

I used a lot of textures from this and I would probably not want to paint more stuff like this one. My favorite part of this one is the umbrella Jisoo is holding. I immensely enjoyed doing that part and making sure it looks like the one in the MV.

Closing Remarks

This is the part of a look back into my past artworks. I enjoyed being able to share my progress with you guys. I felt nostalgic as I was browsing through my files to look for the artworks that will perfectly capture that my art journey has not been as smooth as I liked.

What I learned most from this journey is that practicing is good but there is a good and bad way of practicing. One can keep practicing by doing the same mistakes over and over again, and instead of improving, the mistakes they are making are being ingrained into their muscle memory. So if you feel like you are not improving as fast as you think you can, feel free to stop and take a look at your past artworks to see if you can spot what changes and improvements you can do. Apply all the things you learned in that analysis session the next time you do the same thing again.

More importantly, focus on doing what you can instead of comparing your progress to others. If you keep making a competition out of everything, you might not feel as happy as you could have been with your progress. Keep creating your content, no one else can do it exactly as you would have done it.

If you want to read more of my articles, I have made a list of all the past articles I published to make it easier for you to find one that might catch your interest.

Here is the link for my May 2021 articles: https://read.cash/@ZehraSky/may-2021-articles-summary---59e3f5b8

Here is the 1st week of June 2021 articles: https://read.cash/@ZehraSky/week-1-june-2021-articles-summary-6e15cf71

These are the links to the first two parts of this article series if you missed reading them:

https://read.cash/@ZehraSky/look-into-my-past-artworks-pt-1-c59a6f43

https://read.cash/@ZehraSky/look-into-my-past-artworks-pt-2-ce67d99b