Make mistakes and run with it

So after browsing a lot of tattoo art portfolios, I noticed that most artists and apprentices do their artwork on paper and color them manually, as compared to scanning them and coloring them in Photoshop. Most of the time, the latter is always the easy way out for me . For years I’ve been doing this digital coloring thing. I’m so accustomed to color my work in Photoshop that I almost forgot how fun it is to paint and color your artwork manually. How fun it is to make mistakes. There’s the factor of uncertainty in the process of coloring the artwork that draws me in, the factor of expecting the unexpected. The resulting artwork might not be perfect, it might not be 100% to what you have in mind, but I think it has more soul compared to digitally-colored artwork.

Here’s some comparison. First picture is a design I did recently for a tattoo design contest. It took me 3 hours to sketch, scan in and color  in Photoshop. The result is OK but predictable. I kinda liked it for being so neat, smooth and perfect, but where’s the fun?

This be the second drawing. It’s like a sketchbook rough for a flash sheet I wanna do in the future. I did  the initial linework on my usual sketchbook, then colored it in with some cheap-ass watercolors and some cheap ass colored pencils. It took me an hour. It’s so imperfect but it looks cool because it’s got more soul. Do you agree with me here?

I need to get proper watercolor paper, btw. And good quality watercolor cakes. This kiddy-grade stuff, they’re ain’t cutting it for the kind of practice I need to do before I start my apprenticeship proper. Yes. If all goes well, I will start apprenticing within a month’s time, but we’ll see. I’ll keep you posted.