I have a fun treat for you today! I’m going to show you how one of my favorite pieces came to be. I don’t have pictures of every step, but I’ll show you what I have.

It all started with an idea. I wanted to draw a mouth with a lollipop. I sketched it out and hated it, then I did some more sketching and blending and hated it a little bit less. Eventually, following this pattern, it looked like this:

Now, at this point in time I’m already SO impressed with myself that I’m tempted to leave it like this. However, I couldn’t. There was still so much to do. So I started on a face. I gave it hair, and elf ears, and got a pretty decent start for a head. But then I was absolutely horrified. The cheeks were dark and nothing was in the right position, all the shapes and levels were wrong, so I had to keep going.

I added freckles and eye details and the shading in the ears, I fixed the mouth so it didn’t overpower the whole picture. I changed the shape of the nose to look more realistic, I evened out the shading of the face so it didn’t look like her cheeks were mountains, and soon she became this gorgeous, semi-realistic vision.

But there were so many more things I wanted to see. So I added color, and I changed the colors, over and over and over again. I added a shirt with texture, so you could see it creasing and the grain of the fabric, and then I added skin texture, and then I decided to re-edit the mouth AGAIN. My favorite part, though, was rendering the metal for her jewelry. Just look at the third image below and tell me that silver earring doesn’t convince you it’s real for just one second. I find myself staring at it sometimes and marveling at the fact that I was able to do it.

So I ended up with my final drawing and I started sharing it on the internet, but when I looked at it from a distance, it looked WRONG because of the nose size and shape, so I went in and played with how the nose was positioned on the face for several hours and finally I got it. I deleted the old nose posts and got the new one posted in its place.

This whole process took place over the course of about 4 or 5 days. Mind you, I do have a day job that I go to most days, so it’s not like I was working on this project 24/7.

If this post does anything for you, let it show you that hating your first draft is NOT a sign to give up. It’s a sign to keep going. If you just keep working, keep putting in effort towards your goals, or your art, or your work, then you will get better, and you will become more efficient.

I challenge you to do what I did.

1.) Make something you want to make.
2.) Decide you hate it.
3.) Take a picture of it.
4.) Work on it until you love it.
5.) Stare at it until you start to hate it again.
6.) Repeat steps 3-5 until you are finished.

Then, once you’ve done that,
share your process with me on instagram
(my username is fortunatefem)
and tell me how you feel at the end of it.

Art is all just a process of learning, and if you aren’t practicing, you aren’t learning.

Love always,
-A mildly frustrated but always fortunate fem