It's kind of funny how the least exciting work in the eyes of other people can excite oneself. I have broken out of my art slump with these two sketches. I have discovered hatching!

A lot of my problem was feeling that my sketchwork looked unprofessional. If you look at a lot of master artists, even their sketchwork looks polished. It's maddening, in a very I-wanna-bite-someone-in-the-face kind of way. So decided I'd choose three artists I really admired and look at their technique. I pseudo copied a few pieces just to get the feel for things, suffered a few false starts, then managed to get a pretty good lookin' Haenor. (The hyena guy holding the skull.) I decided it was a fluke, and turned around to do a smirky Iapyx that turned out good.

I'm going to continue to work on straight drafting for a while, cause pencil teaches a lot of stuff that translates over to color work. I'm kind of amazed that I never observed "dark stuff closer, fade-y stuff further away". Shame on me.

It feels good to be back.