Duck This: An Artist’s Journey
Sometimes it pays to revisit a previous artistic work. I’m in the middle of this now with I Am Stone, and I just finished sketching an update to a sticker design. First, let’s have a look at the original.
It looks good. The highlights and shading aren’t great, and the hard black outline is… well, it’s a stylistic choice. The keyboard came out pretty banging if I do say so myself; it’s my favorite part of the sketch. I love the old school, tactile keyboards. I learned to type on a 1996 Mac Performa with keys that made a wonderful sound, and I actually typed my first book report on my mother’s college typewriter. But I’m getting off topic.
I’m not entirely sure what made me choose watercolors for my inktober sketches. As I said on Instagram, I didn’t even plan to participate in inktober until October 1st at about 8:00 PM and had to play a bit of catch up. Again, off topic. My point is that because I didn’t go in with any plan or expectation, I got to just enjoy it.
Doesn’t mean I didn’t learn anything valuable though.
Watercolor challenged me to work in layers, building color and shadow as I went. So today as I went to revisit my rubber duck friend, I took that knowledge to the standard, flat color brushes I’d need to make a defined sticker print.
Poor guy. He’s clearly got a lot of bugs in his code.
I think the update speaks for itself. But the one thing I’ll add is this. Never stop learning, and as you do, don’t be afraid to go back to previous works and update them. After all, you loved them when you made them the first time for a reason, you deserve to spend that time with them.
Something else to think on, too: Progress is such a difficult thing to measure. How do you quantify “growth” as an artist? Even if you never share it, I think it’s worth keeping a file for yourself, because sometimes you have bad days where it feels like you haven’t grown at all and never will, and it’s helpful to go back and see the steps you took to get where you are now.
Maybe in a few months my style will have evolved further, and I’ll draw the rubber duck again. But in the meantime, I’m happy with this version, and holographic Duck This stickers will be available to ship by the end of the month. They are sure to make a perfect gift for the coder in your life.