No January Spotlight

This has been a very busy/crazy month in my life.  I haven't been able to spend much time illustrating.  I was about 65% done with my second illustration a couple of weeks ago, and I lost 90% of my progress in an instant.  It was very disheartening.

Though I resolved to push forward, life hasn't granted me much opportunity lately to actually illustrate.

Right now I'm working on two illustrations.  I'll try to get back on track next week.

So in lieu of my monthly spotlight, I've decided to upload the stages of my illustration process based off my most recent work.

This week's illustration...

I was hard at work on my latest illustration.  Unfortunately, the app I use on my tablet crashed and lost 95% of the work I made.  I still have the rough outline, but I had just started on the shading when the app crashed.

It's a very devastating blow.  There's nothing worse than losing all of your progress in any medium.  It will take me a while to recover and get back on track.  I haven't decided if I'm going to redo my lost work, or simply start a new illustration outright.

Super Vegeta VS Semi-Perfect Cell

This one was a lot of fun to do, between the Super Saiyan aura, drawing Cell, and drawing buffed-up Vegeta.  I tried to be very dramatic with the highlights and shadowing on Vegeta considering the aura, but I think I could have gone more dramatic.

Admittedly, I drew the picture with a reference image which was a still shot from the show.  Most of my drawings are purely from my imagination.  However, I've noticed a slump in my abilities.  Back in my youth, I drew about 50% of my pictures with references, and my drawing skills in general always consistently grew.  In my adulthood, I've noticed my skills only gradually improving.  I think it's because I rarely use references, foolishly thinking that all professional artists never use them.  So for the time being, I'll try to do more reference-based work.  I'm hoping that by this time next year, my non-referenced-based work will have improved accordingly.

Super Vegeta

Here's the first new illustration to kickstart 2020.  It's already off to a roller coaster start for me, personally, but I won't delve into that.  Here's Super Vegeta standing all proud-like.  His proportions ended up being more normalized (longer) than Akira Toriyama's style.  I want to say it was on purpose....but it wasn't.  Either way, I actually like how it turned out.