Here are the two latest drawings of Iris and Jasper, my original characters! Each picture has the character on one side and on the other side their name alone with some words or phrases that describe that character. Iris is female and Jasper is male.
I really love these! I think both of these drawings are some of my best digital work so far! This is probably something I will say about every new drawing I do - but that doesn't make it any less true! Every drawing is my personal best at that moment, and that's the truth. I deserve to be proud of myself for that!
Jasper was easier to draw than Iris, and that may be because I drew him off of another picture of him on the blog while I just tried to draw Iris from my mind. Or it might be because I drew Jasper after I drew Iris and so therefore I'd, obviously, had more practice with using Photoshop. But another thing that surprised me that definitely helped make drawing Jasper easier was the fact that for Jasper I used the pencil tool, instead of the brush tool I had used for Iris and had been using for all of my Photoshop drawings thus far. Ever since I've started using Photoshop I've wished that the brush tool could be more pixel-y, because from experience using the Scratch Bitmap editor it really seems like a more pixel-y brushes would be easier for me to control. Of course I am generalizing because I have only really used the Scratch Bitmap editor to make this judgment. However, when I opened Photoshop and started drawing Jasper, I noticed how much easier it felt that time. Like I was just drawing, not straining to make the lines take the right shape. And when I zoomed in on the picture, I saw that the lines had a firmer, more rigid edge to them than I had seen before, and I was delighted by this crisp new look. After a few moments I realized that I'd been using the pencil tool instead of the brush tool, and that was why I was seeing such a difference. I used the pencil tool for the entire Jasper picture except for the shadowing and reflections - so that the light and shadows would look not stark and jarring but instead smooth, gentle and easy. I'm so happy that the pencil tool is another option for me!!
Even though I am very happy to have found the pencil tool, I am also grateful that I used the brush tool first. If I had used the pencil tool first - for one thing it wouldn't feel as easy as now because at that time, when I first stared out in Photoshop, I had less experience working with the software, and then for another thing even if the pencil tool was easier starting out than the brush tool was starting out, it would have been so much harder for me to then learn how to use the brush tool. I would have had a simple, go-to, easier option in the form of the pencil tool - why would I bother trying to master the more difficult brush? I would want to, but it's possible it might have been harder. It would have taken discipline not to use the easier brush but to instead use the harder one so that I could master it. But as it is, I learnt the harder brush first so that after that everything felt easy. I cannot know for sure that all of this is fully true, that it would have worked out this way in an alternate turn of events, because that's not how things went. Maybe I would have had the same experience even if I had started out with the pencil tool because in that case the pencil tool would feel harder (because of lack of photoshop experience) and the brush would have been easier after some time and some experience had been gained. But what I do know is that generally speaking, in my life, it's always helpful to do the harder thing first and maser it, because then doing the easier thing is a breeze in comparison, and at the end of the day I know that I have both the brush tool and the pencil tool as options for me to use, because I've learnt them both.
I love how doing art can be like little life lessons, help me understand myself and build my confidence.
Both pictures drawn by me in Adobe Photoshop 2018 CC. I drew the picture of Iris on September 27, 2019. I drew the picture of Jasper on October 4, 2019.
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