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Pro tip: Saw my old portfolio from 3 years ago and cringed hard
Found a folder from 2021 with my early digital paintings last weekend and the brushwork was SO chunky and muddy compared to now. Anyone else look back at their old stuff and feel like they've leveled up way more than they realized?
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jackson.matthew5mo ago
Wait, hold on - are you sure those chunkier brush strokes aren't just a style choice that evolved? I used to beat myself up over my old linework being too stiff, but then I realized I was trying to imitate digital artists who used custom brushes I didn't have yet. Your mileage may vary, but sometimes cringing at old work means you learned what tools actually fit your hand, not just that you got better technically.
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jamiew535mo ago
Look, my man jackson.matthew got a point about style evolving but I gotta say sometimes old work just looks bad. I found a sketchbook from 2020 with these weirdly proportioned faces where the eyes were like twice the size they should be. Not a style choice, just me not knowing anatomy yet. Three years later I can nail a portrait in under an hour. Sometimes a muddy painting is just a muddy painting and that's okay. Not everything has to be some deep artistic journey, you know? Sometimes you just got better at your craft.
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keith_rivera195mo ago
Man, that hits close to home. It's like how people say your taste improves before your skill does, but nobody talks about how embarrassing that gap feels. I notice the same thing with cooking too - I used to follow recipes exactly and still mess them up, but now I can throw stuff together and it actually works. That old sketchbook phase is basically a training montage you didn't ask for. You just gotta trust that the ugly stuff was part of the process, not some deeper meaning.
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