"My Sketches Look Better Than My Final Pieces" - The Reason Why and How To Fix It!

Hey Everyone!

Sometimes, don't you feel that your sketches look better than the finalized version of your artwork? Me too. Let's discuss a bit about the reasons why this happens and also some ways we can keep some of that magic of our original sketches.

Often when sketching, we are more focused on capturing the energy of our concepts. But what does energy mean? In my opinion, it's a series of loose lines whose main goal is to visually capture the shape of poses, expressions, and objects. When we don't fully detail every aspect of this sketch, the brain of the viewer (including yourself) takes charge of completing empty spaces, leaving room for creativity without the responsibility of you describing the whole idea visually. 

When you're cleaning up and refining every detail, there's also the risk of introducing mistakes that could distract from or diminish the overall quality of the piece. While this might be acceptable when you're just having fun, for professional work, you'll often need to carefully select which lines or visual elements to retain. I'll guide you through deciding which lines or visual decisions can be kept to preserve the energy of your sketch, and which ones can be cleaned up without compromising its essence.

Now that we have an idea of why sketches often look "better," here are some ideas you can try to retain that energy from your sketches in a more polished result:

Body Poses/Gesture: When refining sketches, focus on maintaining the dynamism of poses. Instead of rigidly outlining every muscle or fold, use suggestive lines. This will preserve the motion and fluidity in characters or objects. For instance, if you’re drawing a dancing figure, keep the swirl of the dress or the curve of an arm light and flowing, just like in your sketch.

Face Expressions: Facial expressions convey a world of emotions. While refining, ensure you don't over-detail facial features to the extent that they lose their original spontaneity. Focus on the eyes and eyebrows and keep them simple. The eyes are where the energy lies. For instance, you can leave that very close to the original sketch and refine a bit around them.

Non Organic Objects: While body gestures and expressions can lose certain energy when choosing to make lines clean and a bit stiff, with objects, it's fine to clean them as long as they have some kind of perspective applied. For instance, when creating different object shapes, position two or three perspective points for them to not look flat. This is the way I usually push an object's energy and it often doesn't need to be messy. If you feel this is not enough, you can also play with the thickness of the line – the closer to the viewer, the thicker. This is a nice way to retain that energy from the original sketch's pressure.

As you can see in the piece I'm sharing with you today, the line looks a bit messy, which means I did not fully clean it up. I tried to avoid erasing some lines as much as I could to maintain this "energy" but also for viewers to understand the concept. Tomorrow, I'll be sharing more details about this concept in terms of values and colors along with a video process and a PSD file for those in the "Mastering Maestro" Tier and above.

Conclusion
Conclusion Through the power of line, you can suggest shapes, and many viewers, including yourself, can complete them with no problem. But when deciding what to clean, it's important to have a clear understanding of what essentially looks okay in a sketchy way. My approach today was focused on three simple points, but if I did not address that specific part of your process you feel is being lost when cleaning, ask yourself: what is it that visually creates this energy? This will bring some awareness and help you capture it, whether it's a sketch or a clean line art drawing.

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