A lifetime of drawing really, though I've come a long way from when I first started drawing Utroms. The last time I had a "real" art class was when I was in high school, and that was five years ago.
Here's an examples of some things I did in October of 2015
I've come along way, especially in settling on a style. One of my
prized examples of art improvement actually comes from Land Before Time fanart from when I was in high school, with growth occuring in four months. Though, the Utrom stuff happened over a course of a year+ .
I've even shared some art progress in three stages by redoing the same art multiple times to test improvement. Going from
here to
here to
here. And I'm considering a fourth version, with revised ideas of what Utrom bedrooms would like like (with which I am just going to call "Pillow Town" for the moment, unless I decide that Quanin might do a different setup).
A lot of artists will tell you to "Practice, practice, practice", but I personally have found it helpful to follow the example of other artists and really study their technique. My best advice is to do more than "practice", but observe what other artists are doing, take examples from them, and have at least a little time to consider the environments your characters would be in. Practice helps, but you can't do it in an empty chamber without any influence.
Drawing humans are usually my weakness, especially in terms of posture and form. Utroms are a little easier in some aspects because there's so much less "body", but then that comes with more complications. Like how physical interaction works. Palling around and hugging and things. I'm trying to decide if they generally don't kiss because it would be hard to do with their enormous mouths, they just do something different.
I actually just finished this, and it came with difficulty on the setting, since I had drawn the characters independent of any kind of room/seating. And because I couldn't decide on a bed or couch...pillow town. Which I guess is where they sleep.
On this one, I got sick of trying to get one side of the mother's face to match the other, so I just copied and flipped it...which ended up looking a lot better than I expected it to.
(I made a mistake and put two shots of rum in a coke instead of one...)
One thing I want to expand from is Utrom families and just do a lot more, but habit keeps me grounded. So that's another thing. Try to expand a little bit from comfort zones. But don't push yourself, that would make it a little harder. Just start with what you can, take advice, look at online tutorials, and let it grow on its own.