How my illustration style changed (+ pictures)

Last month I decided to redraw one of my old illustrations & chose the ‘Secret Place in the Woods’ one for it. After finishing the illustration – I decided to dig into my archive, find those other illustrations & take a look how my illustration style has changed over the years. As you scroll down here you will find three illustrations from the last three years (why I always chose the beginning of the new year to redraw it? I have absolutely no clue). It’s so crazy to look at the older illustrations (which I loved at the time that I drew them, I thought they were pretty good). Looking back, I can distinctly spot all the things I could have improved & could have did differently. I remember getting my Ipad back in December 2018 (roughly a month before I drew the first ‘Secret Place in the Woods’ illustration), it felt so new & wonderful & I was only using the Studio Pen for all the lines and colours. Between the 1st and 2nd illustration (a year has passed too) I grew to love the 6B Pencil and all the roughness it brought to my illustrations.

And now it’s 2021 & I was looking at my postcards & thinking how I could redesign some of the older designs which I wasn’t really happy with anymore. So I decided to start with the ‘Secret Place in the Woods’ postcard and decided that I wanted to add a colorful frame around the illustration (which I love doing at the moment). I decided to change up the colors from blue to a warm tone & added in some more details.

It’s strange to see how much I’ve changed over the last three years (not only illustration wise) & I know I will come back to this in a year or maybe 3 & look at it and think: oh my, this is pretty awful – maybe I should redraw it.

Here are some more of my (very) old illustrations (maybe you know some of them, maybe not):

(These illustrations are all from 12.2018 – 09.2019)

And here’s how I worked before I got my Ipad (with pen on paper & gimp (don’t laugh), all from 2017):