Shank....is a character I have trouble with. She's one of the few who are so gorgeous I feel like I just can't draw them (Elsa's up there, too). I also just plain love her as a character, and any time I love something a lot, it makes it that much harder to draw (which is also why there's not much Zelda art in my gallery despite it being my favorite series!)

I tried to draw her, both as a human and as a pupper, a few months ago. Nowadays, before I draw a character as a dog, I draw them a few times roughly as a human to get a feel for their traits. The human drawings I did for her were abysmal, and the attempts at making her into a dog also disappointed me. It wounded me deeply, and it set off a fire in me to get better, and that's when I started doing daily studies for an hour of EVERYTHING - poses, human faces, hands, feet, landscapes, and animals. I did these studies (using http://www.quickposes.com ) because I was starting to understand that no matter WHAT you draw, as long as it's from life or a photo, it will make all your drawings of anything, even just cartoon dogs, better. I full-on snapped and finally understood why everyone's always drawing those horrid still-lifes I hated so much in school.

I've done those studies every. single. day. for about 4 months since the original attempt, and since I've been feeling a lull in my motivation lately, I decided it was time to face my fears and try Shank again. So again, I drew her as a human first, and those attempts, while still not good enough for me, were markedly better than the ones from 4 months ago. And then I started to try to figure out what she'd look like as a dog again.

This sketch is VERY rough, as the title suggests, because it wasn't even supposed to be a final draft of anything. It was meant to "break the ice" for me, start to build up my confidence (my confidence is always very weak and always needs "kindling" before I draw something for real!). But it seemed like such a good basic start for what I always wanted for Shank Pup, that I colored it, and while it will need some refining, I think this is what my Shank pup will look like.

So this turned out to be a good exercise, even though I didn't mean it that way. It showed me that, even though my improvement is painfully and sometimes depressingly slow, improvement does happen, and these daily hour-long study sessions, though sometimes painful (I don't even want to get up some mornings because I know it's the way I open my day now!) do actually work. And it helps to keep things in perspective. I have days where I wonder why I'm even trying to draw at all. I regret putting all my "eggs" in this art basket, as far as my career is concerned because obviously this isn't what I'm "meant" to do, "I'm so bad at it". But because I've done these every day, and the days and hours are numbered, I can now compare my time spent studying and improving my art to my time spent playing video games (etc), and it helps me to realize that it's okay that I'm not confident or great at art yet - I've only been studying for 133 hours as of today, meanwhile, I've spent 255+ hours in the original Pokemon Red!
(The exact hour count will never be known, since the hour counter in that game clocks out at 255!)

So anyway, long story short, I tried to draw this 4 months ago and failed. Got angry and studied for 4 months straight, and while I'm still not "there" yet, I'm better, and now that I know how to make myself better, I'm just going to keep doing it until I'm finally happy. (Are artists ever actually happy though? lol)

BONUS: Have a Spamley pup, too!! --> https://twitter.com/NyaasuNekoban/s.....865111041?s=20


Shank © Disney
Art by me
More sketches more often on my Twitter! --> http://www.twitter.com/nyaasunekoban