Five Benefits of Redrawing Your

There are many great reasons to open up your portfolio and start to work with your old pieces.

 

Here are five reasons to redraw your old work:

 

Evolve as an Artist

 

Evolution is an integral part of your development as an artist. Styles, techniques, and skills evolve with more practice and as artists are exposed to new influences in art.

 

Redrawing can be a great opportunity to look through your portfolio and revisit some of your earlier work. Not only will you be able to see how your style and skill have changed over time, but it may also give you an opportunity to see things that you would have done differently.

 

Taking the time to redraw can be a great way to further evolve as an artist as you take old work and breathe new life into it.

 

Upgrade Your Skills

 

Sometimes work doesn’t transfer well, especially if you’re moving work from analog to digital.

 

These medium shifts aren’t always perfect. Sometimes lines are blurred, artifacts are introduced, or other imperfections are carried through. You may have originally thought the work was great for a portfolio, but as you’ve grown as an artist that may not be the case anymore.

 

Redrawing is the perfect opportunity to rebuild these works from the ground up in a digital format. With crisp new lines, better scanning or transfer techniques, and stylistic updates, these old works can find new significance within your portfolio.

 

Fill in the Blanks

 

Things sometimes become lost to time, and sometimes artwork can have a nasty habit of going missing. There is nothing worse than going to look at some old work and finding pages are missing from a series, or even finding work that you never had the opportunity to complete.

 

Sometimes you may be able to live with the loss if the work no longer fits with who you have become as an artist. However, most of the time these works are integral to your development, or constitute an important part of your overall story.

 

Redrawing is an opportunity to ensure that these works are complete. You can fill in pages that have gone missing or finally sit down and finish the magnum opus that you never had the chance to complete.

 

Attack the Block

 

Being an artist can be awesome, but you also have to take the bad with the good. One of the worst things that can happen to a creative mind is artist’s block. Sometimes the blocks are easy to work through—just getting out of your space and going for a walk can help. Other times these blocks can last longer, accumulating days, weeks, and sometimes even years.

 

Redrawing can help you get your creativity unstuck.

 

By going back to old work, you’ll still maintain some productivity, and continue to engage in your passion. This alone can ease some of the frustration behind an artist’s block, and it may be the key to getting back into generating new work.

 

Practice Makes Perfect

 

An artist’s work is never done, and the learning process never stops.

 

Revisiting old artwork isn’t just a great way to see how your skills have improved over the years, or even to update your work. It’s also a great way to practice the newest techniques and styles you’ve been learning.

 

The beauty of going back to old work is that it can remind you of ideas, styles, or techniques you may have moved away from, but could be reapplied to your current work. What’s old could be new again, and even enhanced with a new set of skills and a renewed artistic vision.

 

Art Never Sleeps

 

Creating, evolving, and practicing are essential to an artist’s growth. You may grow apart from well-worn themes in art, develop new traits or techniques, and you may continue to want to create something new. But every now and again it’s also important to go back to past accomplishments and an older version of yourself who helped you become who you are today.

 

Redrawing can help you understand your own work better, and may even open up new opportunities to help old art achieve the potential it never had before.

 

Whatever the case may be, we encourage you to keep drawing.