Days? I've been working on my current commission for what, 5 weeks now. I've only just become happy with the forests in the last few days

Stop trying so hard. let it happen. Sometimes too much effort is worse than not enough. Let your own style develop. Draw out your cliffs quickly, then start adding in the details around them. See what they look like after the forests and hills are filled in, and drop some delicate shading in for the extra details. Sometimes you find that things that look like "ugh" are "whoa nice" when contrasted with other elements. Believe me, I've spent YEARS trying to develop the ability to draw out what i see in my mind's eye. When I first started seriously drawing, it was VERY frustrating, i knew EXACTLY what I wanted. It wasn't until 4 years later that I drew out a piece that actually looked the same when i was done as when i first envisioned it. Don't let that stop you, let it fire you up and motivate you! Don't let the time it takes to practice and learn slow you down, value the time for what it is - you are getting to really understand how to draw and how NOT to draw what you see. The time you spend practicing is ALWAYS valuable, treat it like pure gold. You will look back on it years down the road and go "wow, I'm so glad I took the time to learn this". I know I do. And the patience you develop is a transferable skill, it will help you in ALL walks of life





If you can, post your work as you go, get critiques, sometimes you're not as bad off as you think you are. I've learned to value the feedback I get from this site, there are some DAMN fine artists here and the fact that so many of them are willing to take the time to really look at what you post and offer honest well thought out feedback, well, my word of the week is "awesome". I try to give back to the site as much as I get out of it, both on an individual basis and site level, and it honestly helps me improve - by reviewing other people's works and looking for ways I can offer helpful criticisms, it actually makes my own work better. I'm not just looking at my own work and going "how can I do this better" - I'm looking at other pieces and going "how could that look better" - and then I keep my thoughts in mind for my own work too!

My current map for example - i was all set to go through and do finely detailed line work to emulate shading effects. I posted up what I had and a whole bunch of comments came back saying "wow, those mountains are lovely they way they are". I stopped, took another critical look, and I had to agree. Now I'm doing the shading on a different layer, I'll let the colours do the talking. That saved me probably 3 days of work I spent probably 2 weeks working on the forests before scrapping them entirely and redoing them. I just couldn't get them to look like I wanted them too.. but then I noticed one tiny little detail that changed everything.. when I drew in the edge details, I tended to draw in a half circle and then continued the drawing outward.. not sure how else to explain it, but it just didn't look RIGHT. I actually grabbed my eraser tool and erased the bits off the end so the stroke was about 1/4 as long, and suddenly they looked AWESOME. that was JUST the effect I was after. I couldn't draw the details in directly to save my life, but if I drew them the way my hand wanted to and went back over with the eraser, it got the effect I was after..

Don't be afraid to ask for help and advice. Sometimes an extra set (or 12) of eyes will spot something you miss.