Esy / PotetoBear

2020-2025 archive batch - second to last one!

With Art Fight coming up, I wanted to get this batch posted now so I can start moving toward sharing newer work again.

This batch is from a fun stretch of experimenting, figuring things out, and slowly pushing past my comfort zone. Some folks may have noticed that I used to post a lot of busts, and honestly, that was because it was what I felt most confident in.

Over the past year though, I have been trying to push further into other parts of art too - composition, full bodies, poses, rendering with more intent, and generally trying to make choices for reasons beyond "my brain says this looks right, probably."

I have also started working through some courses I paid for approximately billions of years ago.

I may post studies here and there, but I will probably focus more on cleaned up finished pieces, especially since some studies are course assignments and I am not totally sure how much of that I should post back to back.

Either way, I feel like I found my general style a long time ago. Now I mostly want to expand what I can actually do with it.

The brain fog is catching up with the word vomit, so I will leave it there. Thanks for looking through the archive chaos with me.

Oh and for anyone curious, one of the courses I have been poking at so far is MedsMap:

Old Archive: Bear Companion

Some of these are tiny baby artist fossils, some are just neat to look back on, and all of them are being tossed lovingly onto the archive shelf before I move into the newer 2020-2025 pieces individually.

Old Archive - Chapy x Arathea

A softer one from the fantasy OC archive. Chapy and Arathea having a soft little moment together. Since it is Pride month, this one gets to escape the archive pile sooner rather than later. Two characters being sweet and cozy together with some nuzzling, a ritual even ancient beings can partake in from time to time.

Old Archive - Arathea in Bloom

Dusting off one of my D&D characters for the upcoming artfight This is Arathea, one of my older characters. I still really like the dress concept here and how they work with her being. A little appetizer/introductions before I introduce the rest of my pieces with her {Tags}

Art Fight 2026 ~ Team Mystery

I'm joining Team Mystery on Art Fight this year, with a mix of assorted little gremlins :) Art Fight: [link]

I learned how to pin on instagram

Now I have a 3 split banner

Another one from the pile - This one’s from another D&D group my lycanthrope blood hunter being looked after by her romantic interest after a rough run of character development.

Just a quiet little "you’ve been through hell, let me take care of you" moment. Big ol' dog getting a big ol' bath and some much-needed coddling.

Somewhere from the 2020–2025 archive pile, from a time where my proportions were also going through some much needed character development :')

Also, got an art trade going on where her monster form is currently in the works by Voidtech because I mean ***look at how they draw creatures???***

sretghserhg I’m so excited to share that once they're ready, I'm doing my magic touch of humanoid in exchange

Found some old footage from years past among a few other pieces, so I’ll be sharing them for a bit while I work through the archive.

Speedpaint first, finished art second.

This one’s from when I was really hooked on Toram Online and made most of my in-game currency through the community art forums. The people there were super supportive of budding artists too :’) It was one of the first few MMOs where I got to meet a bunch of really cool folks through art.

They got me on a leash

small in-between creature while i work on stream stuff

stream setup work continues in the background, which means most of what I’m doing is deeply uninteresting to look at

so here is a small piece instead

Made a silly little animation for this month’s VGen challenge theme of paws.

An adventurer goes through the hardest battle of will against the softest forbidden treasure in the forest: the guardian's toe beans.

REDRAW OLD ART.

Progress is weird because you usually do not notice it day to day.

Your eye and your hand train at different rates. Sometimes your eye levels up first, which means you can suddenly see that something looks wrong before your hand knows how to fix it yet.

So if you are ever staring at your art wondering if you have improved at all, here is some wisdom from my far younger years, in case you are a youngin who has not been smacked with it yet:

Redraw old art.

Not because the old one is bad. It got you here. But because it gives you actual proof that all those tiny invisible practice points were stacking in the background like some sneaky little RPG stat.