Art by Karl Kwasny | Hi i’m and artist and a big fan of your work, must say its really nice of you being so helpful and answer people’s questions. you tend to mention a lot that your progress is not so simple as it looks and you usually sketch several versions of the same drawing until you come up with a sketch you like and only then start inking. What happens if you make a mistake after the inking and basic coloring stage? Do you start over? What are your most common mistakes and how do you handle them?

vanilla666 asked: Hi i'm and artist and a big fan of your work, must say its really nice of you being so helpful and answer people's questions. you tend to mention a lot that your progress is not so simple as it looks and you usually sketch several versions of the same drawing until you come up with a sketch you like and only then start inking. What happens if you make a mistake after the inking and basic coloring stage? Do you start over? What are your most common mistakes and how do you handle them?

I ruin drawings all the time!

Ink and watercolour are both quite unforgiving, and if I make a mistake that’s too big to correct I generally like to start over. I find that ruining a drawing always gives me a better idea of how I should approach it, and the subsequent drawing ends up being a huge improvement over the first attempt. Failure, I think, is part of the process.

Usually I’ll have a pretty good idea of how I want an image to work before I start inking and colouring, but I still like being able to improvise. Sometimes I’ll make a poor judgement call and the lighting will look off, or the face will be inked badly, or the colours will clash, or the linework won’t be up to my usual standard. Any number of things can and do go wrong, but I always try to learn from it and incorporate what I’ve learnt into the next attempt.

It can become frustrating when one simple illustration ends up taking several days to get right, but it helps to look at every failure as being a step closer to the finished product.