Not a Mistake vs Who Me?

The realisation that God would choose me, even though I am broken, inspired these young men.

The first (below) was a watercolour character painted way back in Oct, 2018.

The second (above) was a very quick sketch started and completed in a couple of hours 1 year later.

Both are quick sketches, no preliminary work at all, just playing about with poses, facial expressions and colours.

The boy in the yellow top has a great facial expression which says ‘I can’t believe you chose me!’ and I love that positive feeling that he evokes. In contrast the other little guy look in disbelief, seemingly questioning if it could possibly be true - ‘really, could it be that I am not a mistake?’

The pose of the yellow character is a bit too static and of course the lettering is off. The green boy is more successful from a gesture point of view and probably more complete overall. That would be, in part, due to everything I learned and practised over the year, that progress is self evident in my opinion. The other thing is investing properly in producing art.

I bought a Cintiq and signed up to the Adobe suite in summer of 2019. The improveement in the digital art I was producing was massive and immediate. I had so much to learn just to master the basics which could be done with pencil and paper, of course it could, but it would have been so much slower and wasting all that paper was grating on me. Pre-photoshop I was using pen and paper, pencils, watercolour and the free download, Krita. It was fine, it really was, and a more accomplished artist can produce some really good works with those tools. I was really frustrated by the slow progress though which the Cintiq/photoshop combo have rectified. I am learning quickly, practising daily, producing much better art which transfers back to watercolour more successfully than previously and I feel much more able to reach my goal of being a childrens book illustrator.

So which little man speaks volumes to you?

And why?

Is it down to the quality of the art or is it simply Mr. Sunny Positive or Mr. Green Disbelief?