So, last year I drew redesigns of Kwannon and Betsy from the X-Men, then decided to draw a psychic fusion of the two, and the first drawing above was the initial result. When I stepped back, I felt like something was off with it, and the more I looked at it, the more I disliked it. Finally I decided to scrap the drawing, and I never posted it (until now). (At the time, I decided to start over and complete a more streamlined and straightforward attempt–click here to revisit that result along with my drawings of Kwannon, Betsy, and Logan)

But back to the bad one 😆… it’s a pretty weak, cluttered composition, and lacks the sketchy energy of the character redesigns I was doing, yet also falls short of being a more polished drawing. I think it was a case where I was feeling a bit ambitious and got carried away with that momentum, yet failed to balance it with sufficient forethought and planning. I know that for my own process, I need to take care of composition and planning issues as early as possible–thinking “I’ll fix this as I go” pretty much never works out.

Anywayzzz, I recently stumbled back on this drawing while sorting through my files. With the benefit of some distance, I felt it was an interesting artifact after-the-fact… a byproduct of the process. And the story is maybe worth sharing just in case anyone else is out there kinda whiffing it on the first try? 🤔😆