I'm working on color schemes for my character designs, which is a whole new level of pain. Being a R&D software engineer is good practice for concept art. A day's worth of head-scratching might leave you with a pile of Not Its and little else to show for your trouble. And then you get that glimmer of inspiration that actually goes somewhere. And sometimes you look back on the whole process and wonder why you hadn't thought of your final idea at the get-go, as it seems so obvious in retrospect. Perhaps I should take a break in favor of my almost-finished historical fiction projects, which I have been managing to brainstorm amid the visual artsfest of the past few months.
Which is especially silly because 2012 was a fantastic art year for me in which I made some incredible progress. Turns out my Photoshop setup was terrible for what I'd been trying to do. I switched to Manga Studio, which supports a wide range of natural-feeling ink widths out of the box, and pored over pro artwork to get some sense of the nuance I was missing from my own drawings. Sadly I intimidated myself from getting back in the saddle again after a few months off from drawing, but I'll be kicking myself in the rear end soon enough.
