1863-project-art:OC-tober: Day 31You’ll Learn To Draw Your OCs Really Well If You Have Them Fo

1863-project-art:OC-tober: Day 31You’ll Learn To Draw Your OCs Really Well If You Have Them For Fifteen Years: Dustin Thatcher, LondiniumAs pretty much everybody knows, Dustin’s my favorite son. That’s no question. I’ve “known” him since December 2004, but back then I wasn’t the best artist on the block because I was only a sophomore in high school and had just started taking my art seriously a few years prior. The drawing on the far left dates to December 11th-12th, 2004, when Dustin was only a chimney sweep with no other career and was good at playing marbles (that’s what he’s holding there; he’s not making you play The Game or anything). I didn’t really know what I was doing, didn’t have proper clothing references to work with, and thought that Londinium was going to be serious and profound. (The last one changed within weeks because the characters asserted themselves and wanted to be funny instead, which is good because that’s all I can write.) My art had a definite uptick in skill in 2012 because I started working on it a lot more, and it shows - the second drawing is from 2012. Dustin was more established as himself at that point, but he still was better established in his sweep job than he was as the pianist that he aspired to be, so I was still drawing him with the work clothes on for the most part at that point. By 2014, I began to get more of an idea of how 1860s menswear worked, as visible in the third drawing - that’s just a two-year difference, but you can see a pretty big jump in skill there nonetheless because I was using more references and figuring out how to imbue more personality into things. The final image is from earlier this year (2019) - it’s from Dustin’s character sheet that I made, and it shows him in his so-called concert blacks, which he wears when he’s playing the piano in more formal settings (including on stage for large crowds, since he does eventually get to that point). If anything, it’s proof that if you keep a character around for long enough, you do learn how to draw them presuming you work at improving (and try all different sorts of strategies to get better at your art! It’s not so much the quantity of the practice as how you practice sometimes!). Well, that and they’ll become a part of you more than you ever expected. I didn’t know Londinium was going to be a long-term thing for me - I thought I’d write a bit and then move along. It’s been 15 years, and amongst other things, Dustin has his own Twitter account where he yells about classical music a lot. He’s probably my best-known character on all accounts (he’s the one my friends seem to recognize the most), and since it’s been so long now he feels like a friend I’ve had for half my life and I treat him with the sort of reverence and respect I would treat a long-time friend with. I know a lot of the people who are going to see this when I reblog it to my main account are younger than I am because this website skews young, and I want you to know that you don’t have to give up those OCs. You can keep them forever. You can change their fandom, adapt them to new stories, adjust their looks, and all manner of things to keep them alive. There’s no reason why you can’t keep writing for them for the rest of your lives. Besides, they’re your friends, even if they aren’t manifest in the real world. Treat them as such and you’ll go far. -- source link

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