Art Portfolio, and Remembering My Strengths

It's come to my attention that I would probably be both more productive and more successful if I could focus on a couple interests.  That, however, is apparently not my nature.  I've been an artist for years, occasionally professionally. I've been out of the mood for more than a year, but now I'm back to it and part of that interest includes constructing a new online portfolio: The Art of Catherine Noble Beyer.  Yeah, yeah, I know, I'm at a loss for a more creative name.  I've been trying for a company name now for about...well, a decade at least. 

Art is a tough thing to get into.  There's a fairly wide skill gap between stuff your friends think is only mediocre and stuff companies are impressed with.  I fall in that gap.

On top of which, interest in art is always changing.  When I first got into color, Prismacolor pencils were all the rage.  By the time I started showing my portfolio off to companies, they were out of style.  Too grainy in texture.  I tried traditional acrylics and oils, but I discovered I'm not a big fan of painting.  Then some genius invented watercolor pencils, and those made me pretty happy.  Now the rage is digital.

In preparing for this new portfolio, I flipped through an old sketchbook to double-check I hadn't missed anything.  In fact, I had completely forgotten about two images, features in the portfolio as Shaddowrunner and Down and Out.  Down and Out is particularly ironic because it's a failed attempt of depicted one of my roleplaying characters, yet is visually one of the better pieces I've done.

Both pieces are done in pencil, and the thing I suddenly remembered was pencil will always be my strength.  I'll keep struggling with new ways of working in color, but dammit, my graphite pencil works are darn good, and I need to stop being so deppreciative of my own talents.  And I should probably go back to pencil work a little more often to remind myself of that fact.