an AI would never do this!

on the purpose of mistakes in art

Did you know sadbook is drawn by hand? Maybe you do; every so often in the drawings there are little smudges… that would never get there in digital art!

I do clean up the drawings a lot*, but sometimes I leave those tiny imperfections because they show something unique—these lines, black on white, are part of a drawing process, something physical that exists & that could be touched. Also, I am only one small artist trying to make mostly-daily comics, and I do not have the capability to worry so much about making every single panel Pristine and Perfect. If I tried, I would only get so overwhelmed…

*yup

But there is another reason too. And it has to do with the fact that, when you are an artist looking at other artists, it’s so easy to feel like you will never get anywhere, because other people’s art is so much better than you could ever make! But that’s the thing, isn’t it? You never get to see the process—not really. You don’t know how much time that other artist has spent perfecting something, or how many failed drafts there have been, or how many smudges have been meticulously cleaned up in post-production… all you see is the final Art, the pinnacle, the shiny face of other people’s work, while you are stuck knowing about all your own troubles and false starts. And so—seeing imperfection from artists I admire has always been inspiring to me. It reminds me ‘everyone tries a few times, everyone puts effort into it, everyone starts somewhere and gets better as they go on.’ And seeing artists get better over time and continually keep striving—is what finally gave me the inspiration to try my own hand at comics and graphic novels like The Yellow Wallpaper and illustrated books like The Picture of Dorian Gray* and even this, The Sadbook Collections.

*in both of which I do have, since it is Published and all, help in the stage of touching up, and which I am very thankful for.

So these imperfections have a special reason to them as well as a practical one—because just maybe it will inspire another artist to try.