Art improvement journey!

Take a look at these two drawings :)

 Fig 1. 2026 // 2 hours and 11 minutes

Fig 2. 2024 // 4 hours and 46 minutes

Back in 2024, I was inspired by some AI slop I found on Pinterest. Sad I can't find it now, but it's a burly shirtless man in either a black spedo or knee-length shorts doing a sorta weird dance in the middle of a stage surrounded by other burley men. Upon seeing that image, I was like 'oh! let me draw my own version but with my blorbos!'

I initially struggled a lot with the anatomy at first? It was a nightmare trying to get all the individual Marcos to have unique facial expressions and poses. In hindsight, I dislike how... old Marco looks like that is not my man! Eventually, I gave up on it (clearly) even though I had plans to render it with deep red night-club-esque lighting. 

Roughly two years later, I suddenly remembered this drawing existed and I wanted to redraw it. This is especially so when I found my original Pinterest reference board and all the poses I wanted to draw for Marco. I was like 'oh hell yeah! this is perfect!'

After showering at 10:30 in the morning, I kept my head down and started drawing. I was surprised at how quickly everything came together. The table, Ace's facial expression, his bunny suit, even down to the Marcos themselves—Everything fit together more coherently than the original concept. 

For this version, I've decided to scale everything back, to focus on less Marcos and to have a sketchier look without any expectations of a fully rendered piece. I like to think these decisions worked in my favour, because the sketchier drawing feels more alive and looser? It looks more complete even though it took less time. More importantly, I had more fun doing it.

My only minor nitpick, is I want every Marco to be associated with a wine glass of some sort, so we can have a more circular composition. I can imagine it now, and it won't be too hard to draw... Oh well, maybe for the next redraw in a few years. I have work to do now haha. Good weather's coming—I hear thunder as I type all this.

At any rate, however, I think it's fun to see how much my art has improved over time :D For one, I took way less time to nail all the poses even while heavily referencing and I like how sketchy it looks. The new version has a newspaper comic quality to it. Maybe it's the colour of the background?? 

ENOUGH OVERTHINKING! TIME TO LOCK INTO MY THESIS