I finally stopped over-painting after seeing a mentor's layers in Portland

I used to spend 6 hours on one character trying to make every stroke perfect. Then a local artist showed me her Sketchbook file with 40 layers, each one just a rough pass, and it clicked that blocking in ugly shapes builds better form than fussing early. Now I force myself to keep the first 15 minutes messy, and my final renders look way cleaner. Anyone else dump detail work until the color pass?

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sethmartinez1mo ago

Remember doing a group critique back in college where this one guy brought in a piece he swore was "done" after like three hours of tiny crosshatching, and the teacher just stared at it and said "your hand is lying to you." That stuck with me more than any technique. Now I do the opposite and rush through the ugly blocking stage so my brain has less time to overthink, but the real game changer was realizing my monitor's brightness was making me add contrast that didn't exist in the actual print. So I spent a week working in a dim room with the screen turned down and suddenly my layers looked way more honest. Kinda made me wonder if half my fussing was just me fighting my own settings, not the art.