You Can Do Better

I'm going to share an epiphany I had a while back while doing a project for a client. After the initial sketch was approved I started refining my drawing. I had spent a few hours on it and was liking it. But then I noticed that the placement of the hands were wrong. The way they were facing did not make sense. (If the style I was going for was more stylized and graphic or flat it would not have been a big deal, but that was not my aim for this drawing.)

I hated the thoughts of redrawing those shoes laces! My first reaction was to keep going. I figured most people wouldn't notice. I'd only change it if the art director said anything.

However, that thought nagged me. I knew I could do better. But by going back I'd be spending more time than I wanted on this picture. But after my personal debate, I decided to bite the bullet and make the change. I ended up spending an extra couple hours making the changes and the funny thing is that as I made those changes I noticed other flaws with my drawing that I needed to change.

I'm not going to lie. It was a painful and dreaded thing when I realized how much I had to change, but in the end I was so much more satisfied with my drawing.

 

It made me reflect on my life. How often do I just get by? I can say, "You know what? No one else will notice so what's the big deal?" The deal is that I live with myself. And why shouldn't I try to do better? Anyway, since then I've tried doing things just a bit better. 

But I also want to say that I'm not doing it to compare myself to others. I know a dozen artists that could do a much cooler drawing of this little girl. But the point of changing the drawing wasn't because I was trying to be better than another artist. It was because I knew I could do better.