Walker Software Weblog

I was talking with a friend of mine last week we were both lamenting that we no longer draw much anymore. Most of my artwork is all done with computers now. It’s a shame because in high-school most of my best pieces were salvaged mistakes, many started in a completely different direction than the final piece. With a computer, the cost of erasing is so low mistakes never get saved and fleshed out. In a way, creativity thrives on limitations.

In high-school, I rarely ever sketched. I hated normal pencils, hated the sound they make when marking on paper. Coloring pencils never bothered me. I always used pens if given a choice. I’d draw in pen in my sketch book with no pencil lines. Didn’t matter if I was doing cross-hatching or stipple. If I needed color, I use coloring pencils or water-color right in the sketch book. If I liked something in the sketch book, I’d paint a larger version in acrylic on canvas. But most of the time, I wouldn’t bother with a small version of an painting. My art teacher would chastise me for making “finished works” in my sketch book.

Now, I couldn’t do that if my life depended on it. I’ve gotten so used to drawing with bezier lines, my hand drawing skills have atrophied. I’ve decided to get back in the groove and sketch (still in pen though) a small character or object on paper at least one a day. 3 or 4 times a months, I’ll take one of the better ideas an create a more polished version. That way, at the end of a year, I should 52 characters or objects they could be usable for a game, comic, animation, or whatever.