My favorite pieces of my own work are often not regarded by other people. And I can see why that might be. The hands are tiny. The detail in the groin area looks unfinished. The belt looks more 2D than the pants they're holding up. The hood is sloppy. The hair has no highlight. The ears don't match the angle of the head. The arms aren't properly foreshortened... Etc. Etc. Et-effin-cetera...
But what if you knew the purpose of this image was learning a new way to digitally color using a random sketch? Not a finessed line drawing, but an imperfect rendering of a character I was in the middle of redesigning.
I wasn't aiming for perfection in the original sketch, I was roughly making an idea visible. And I chose this image for the coloring tutorial I studied because the lines scanned clearly.
So this image... I'm proud of it for how clearly it shows ME how much I learned from the lesson on digitally coloring traditional sketches. That's why it's one of my favorites, and also why I share it a lot. It's also the first piece where I digitally drew the background.
It's also the first piece where I applied critical thinking to my own work. I can see everywhere I did improve, and everywhere I need to improve in this one piece. I also see all the directions I can go with style, media, and subject matter.
Sometimes... the piece we disregard is a defining, pivotal work of the artist. And sometimes the artist doesn't see why no one else likes it as much as they do (and we end up blaming algorithms). Which is why we artists often have to remind ourselves, "I'm making this for me; it's a nice boost to my ego when other people like it, too."
