I don’t make a lot of sense. Most of you know that I’m a graphic designer for a living. My technical title is Art Director. I know! It sounds super fancy, right? I direct art for a living! It’s not really that exciting though. It mainly involves putting words on images and such.

I used to be a fine artist. I painted some, but my real love was drawing with mixed media. Graphite, charcoal, carbon, Conté crayons, hard pastels, chalk, oil pastels and any dry medium that was in the black and white spectrum. I did some color works, but really, I loved working in black and white. I pretty much only did closeups of people, too. Like so:

I was good at it. I was such a good realistic artist that really, you might as well just take a picture. It’d be easier. Black and white realistic drawings of people. BORING. So, I kind of stopped doing it. My last one is unfinished. It’s huge. It’s the biggest thing I ever attempted. As of now, it’s rolled up in my closet. I haven’t even looked at it in probably four years.

Now, that’s not to say that I haven’t made art in all that time. I certainly have. I’ve made lots of art. Instead of breaking out my charcoal stick, these days, I fire up the old Adobe Illustrator. Some of my doodles are on this blog. I’ve made lots of drawings in Illustrator. I love messing around in there actually. But what comes from Illustrator is so different from what I used to make on paper and canvas.

A few weeks back, I wanted some original art to adorn one of my bedroom walls. I nearly bought some, but I couldn’t justify the expense. Instead, I decided to make my own art. I’ve even been toying with the idea of selling them as prints online somewhere. They might sell. You never know what people are into.

I know, right? They’re goddamn adorable. So far, I’ve made 18 different animals, but that’s including our beloved Goldfish (which I would never sell).

What I want to know is, how can the same person be responsible for both vastly different styles of art? Why is my style in fine art so different from my digital art style? Why is it when I go to draw something in illustrator, it isn’t a human face but a panda?

If you are an artist, do you find this to be the case with you? Even if you’re not, do you find that you do two separate things in a completely different style?

Help me out here. I just don’t make any sense.