While I ended the challenge with my last post about Trey, I decided to give this challenge a proper closing.
Digitober Thoughts
After a month of Digitober, I can definitely say I made some notable development as an artist. I learned a lot of techniques in digital painting--from watercolor techniques to generating lightning to painting rain. Pixel art-wise, I didn't feel like I had learned much apart from creating 2.5D sprites. Still, it's something. 😄
Prior to this challenge, I had always felt so daunted with Photoshop. It just felt like something that was a pain to figure out and work with. Admittedly, I also still preferred to use Pixelmator over Photoshop because I was so familiar with the former, even though it had been a long time ever since I touched a Mac (it was a weird and irrational thing I just needed to get over). Now, I feel a lot more settled and comfortable with using it, and I came to realize it was also more convenient that I used it anyway because most tutorials involve the use of Photoshop over other applications.
I don't know if I'm gonna be keen on doing another month's worth of challenges in the future. I realized how time-consuming it is to just make the art and brainstorm on how to draw what I have in mind. I definitely missed my evenings and weekends of just gaming. It's nice to be productive, but I really burned out near the end of the challenge, and getting sick for three days only made it more difficult for me to keep up.
I noticed I've also been making Gator Buddies focal in most of my work. The more I see these characters in digital, the more I want to further explore and develop them. However, it does leave me a bit bored seeing the same style of painting over and over sometimes, so...
Improvements
Now, I would like to focus more on perspective drawing. There's a lot of stuff I want to draw but can't because I don't know enough about perspective. I want to take the time to just draw stuff in perspective, in freehand or with perspective grids, just to get a feel for it and learn how it works. I have a number of photos I can use as references...
I also wanna do more anatomy studies as well. My drawing style of people has highly unchanged since 8 years ago, and I just really wanna improve on that. I also realized how inconsistent my anatomy tends to be too, so that's another thing to improve upon.
All in All...
Will there be another Digitober or Inktober next year? Hard to say right now. It's still too far ahead in the future, and I don't know how I'll feel then.
Will there be more art this month? Yes, but I'm still fairly burnt out from last month's challenge. I need a break from art for like a week or two, just to refresh my head again. Won't stop me from taking some time to make perspective drawings as practice though.
I'm still disappointed about not being able to finish Digitober this year, but honestly, I'm quite satisfied knowing I've made a lot of stuff for the challenge and that I've made some kind of progress with art. And there's surely more art to come. 😊
