I’m about 3 weeks into teaching myself at home. I have been following a playbook by a great artist I found online, did drills 99% of the time for 3 weeks and finally decided to do my first design just this past week (on the left). The first design was done on a 1mm skin, and despite not being even close to perfect, I was pretty proud to see how far I’ve come. When I first started I couldnt even pull a line without immediately messing it up, so it was nice to see how I’ve progressed.

I decided since I was graduating to designs, practicing the flow of shapes rather than just drills, I would get myself some thicker skins to also focus on depth. But I feel like the thicker skins just totally threw me off. The design on the right is my first with the new skins, and I struggled so much with it compared to the 1mm, feeling like I just lost so much line control out of nowhere.

I wanted to see if anyone else might have gone through a situation like this, and maybe how it translates to real skin? Obviously, fake skin is not at all like real skin so it might be hard to explain the difference between 1mm, 3mm, and real skin.

Do you feel like the 3mm is more accurate in comparison to real skin with depth, or is 1mm more accurate as it’s not as squishy plasticky as the thicker skins? Should I maybe reconsider these new skins I bought and go a different route? Or am I just grasping at straws trying to figure out why I suck all of the sudden, when in reality Im just not experienced HAHA.

Any tips, comments, ideas, please!

1mm Skin vs 3mm Skin