How Do I Stop Being A Perfectionist - Blog Posts

HOW DO YOU DRAW SO FAST OMGGGG

I worked really hard on it tbh haha. A few years back I went through a long period of intense perfectionism where I slowed down to a crawl (like five comic pages in 4 months). I finally decided that that wasn't working for me, and so I started implementing my motto: shitty is better than incomplete!

Basically it's about the idea that it's more important to me to get the ideas and stories out there than it is for them to be perfect. I have a lot of stories I want to tell, and there's only so much time for me to tell them. It helps to remind myself of this as much as possible!

As for technical tricks, I do a few things that really help:

Draw a lot! Practice is truly one of the number one ways to improve speed, as annoying as it is to accept

I don't zoom in too far

I only use 1 brush at 1-2 sizes for inking (outside of specialized stuff like stippling)

I put hard limits on a lot of stuff--how much shading I do (if any), or what shape my comic panels are (only squares, no diagonals or weird shapes), for example

My characters (comic characters especially) all have pretty simple designs and outfits

I write down every idea for an illustration that I have, even if I'm not ready to tackle it yet. That way when I have a chance to sit down, I've got a whole list ready to go and I'm not waffling around in the concept stage

Finally, I've learned to accept my imperfections as a neat part of my art! It's not easy, and I slip back into bad habits sometimes, but I try my best to see every misplaced mark or color that bleeds outside the line as proof that a human hand made this. I don't spend a lot of time correcting mistakes or painstakingly trying not to make them.

Here's an example from Hello Sunshine, where if looks fine from far away, but if you zoom in a bunch, you can see all kinds of little "mistakes." gaps in the ink and color, the line of Alex's ear doesn't match up, very sketchy linework where their faces meet, haha.

But then when you zoom out even a little bit, you a) don't notice those things nearly as much, and b) I think it gives it a kind of traditional charm. Just because you CAN use ctrl-z doesn't mean you HAVE to.

Anyway I hope that helps!!