Sometimes it can be really hard to judge how "good" one's own art is. It's easy to turn blind to art one creates (one stares at the damn thing long enough, after all). Sometimes things look good to you - and not to anyone else. And occationally there are those images that you yourself were not particularly happy with but that others like a lot. It's all subjective of course, but sometimes this can be really surprising. Tell us your anecdotes in this thread.


Below are a few of my own pickings:


Hard to imagine that Party of Trolls is more than seven years old now. This image was intended as a total throw-away. I started drawing a random woman, then made her lit by green light, which ended up looking just like green skin, and to fix that I eventually just messed around and converted her into a troll. I was not at all pleased with the result - the cropping of the image is horrible, the legs are off and overall it's not really a finished image.
But a lot of people liked this one. A lot, no matter how much I tried to downgrade it. To this day the troll girl is a favourite character among several of my relatives and they are the main reason I make new images of her now and then. I eventually did an updated version] which at least made use of the entire canvas.


It's a sketch. Really, it is. I made Grumpy farmer as a tutorial piece for how to sketch characters in GIMP (the tutorial's in my sig). But for some reason this image gets mentioned and pointed out when RL people sift through my gallery. I still don't really know why.


I remember being awfully proud of this. Much deserved break is a fan-art piece of sorts for the MMORPG EVE online (I ran a small art collective inside the game at one point). People were not too pleased with it though and RL friends were most sceptical, notably with the anatomy ("stiffness") of the guy and a faint uneasiness from the slope of the horizon. I didn't really buy the anatomy critique at the time but with the benefit of letting it rest for many years I can see the point. It's just not as good as I thought at the time.


The Warlord was, at the time, my largest project by far, it took more than a week to complete. It's also accompanied by a massive tutorial. People had good things to say, but I must admit I was never quite pleased with the final outcome, even less so as time has passed. The two characters feel too stiff and impersonal and the image feels to barren to me. In the end this came out more as a technical exercise than conveying any form of emotion.


All Hallow's night snack is one of those quickies that people ended up liking a lot more than I anticipated. I liked it okay, but some said that this was the best I'd ever done, which surprised me. It goes to show that emotion and story is often more important than spending a lot of time on technique and detail.


Wrong Tunnel is an image I started out really liking. This was done in a faster and looser style and was great fun to do. It fell flat when it came to viewer appreciation though, most were rather meh about this one. I think it is probably a bit too hard to read with not enough contrasts to show the action. Also in retrospect the anatomy of the characters is really quite iffy. I don't remember why I never went back and fixed that, probably because I merged all layers and it felt like too much work to repaint it all around a vastly modified anatomy.


Skew World is one of my personal favorite pieces, something which is certainly not shared by all. There are viewers who literally feel physically sick watching this. Interestingly a surprising number of viewers seem to recognize themselves in the text (not sure what that says about our society though). It remains a niche image for sure, but I still like this a lot.


There is something about dragons. Almost all my dragon images tend to get an unproportionaye bunch of favorites on DeviantArt. I get the feeling it's the dragon theme in general which is simply very popular. My Study of a Dragon's birth follows an existing style of Dragon that I've been developing and I like the image just fine. But it has a solid black background and is not really intended as anything but a cute little study. I'm quite surprised to find that it's up there among the most popular images from my DA gallery.


Into it's Element was an attempt at making a sort of thematic continuation of one of my most popular images Out of its element. I spent a lot of time on this, made 3D models of the dragon to get the perspective right, made studies of the soldiers and all sorts of serious technical fluff.
And it just failed dramatically. The image is a total mess, with stark contrasts that is nigh impossible to read, a wide format that is just making things unfocused and confusing. Bleh. Sometimes not even a dragon can save an image I guess.


Lastly, this cute little study was surprisingly fun in that I sent it as a mother's day card and on the small screen of her phone my mum actually thought it was a photo. She were surprised that I had managed to get one that bloomed at that time of year. I'd call that a suprising success.



I think that's enough from me. Let's hear your own stories.
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Griatch

I am always surprised by the positive response I get from others. I have never been totally happy with my paintings apart from maybe Sharadil (http://gimpchat.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=7002)
and I've still got to put some shadow under her hair.

How can people dislike these Griatch? These fantastic results will be cherished in the ages to come when the robots replace us even.

I think one of the most liked drawings that I wasn't actually happy with was this one:


Although his details weren't the best out of my whole Close up series he was the most liked!!!
His "personality" seemed to glow more than the details of all the other drawings...Which I understood to a point but...He looks scruffy to me!

griatch: a very interesting thread! i loved the "wrong tunnel" and "skewed world" pictures. and i totally understand why people love the troll girl, it's the sheer joy of her expression.

mokonafan: oh, i remember him ! i think the composition and colours and the personality of the character are a great combination.

i don't think people have ever surprised me much by liking something i did a lot more than i do myself, but there have been plenty of times when i really liked something myself and no one else did.

@Griatch - I've always liked your work. You do an excellent job with light and shadow. I especially like the Halloween composition.

Nice results from everyone in this thread!

@Erisian:
I missed that thread with Sharadil. She reminds me of the female Vulcan from Star Trek: Enterprise.

@lylejk:
Until the robots take over huh? Thanks. .

@Mokonafan
I remember this one; and I still think it's the best of your closups.

@AnMal
I've grown to like the trollgirl too now, but it sure didn't start out that way.

@PhotoComix:
I remember the gargoyle images well.
As for your "least liked", I believe you did a large number of images using this style and subject matter. The closeup people (especially of elderly subjects) came out spectacularly. This particular image has too vague a subject though - it's a bit hard to read and the filter effect looks best on close-ups (in my opinion).
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Griatch

I'm not even nearly as good as all of you but I drew these two butterflies a while back. They were my first butterflies and they didn't look like I wanted them too but everybody seemed to like them. I guess they're ok, considering I have the artistic ability of a three toed tree sloth.

photo comix: i like all the images very much except for the first one - it's a little bit messy, i think, i don't know what detail to focus on first. but your gargoyle is really lovely, the globulized fractal image is stunning and i think the one with the flock of .. eh... robotic sheep? is actually rather good.
gms9810: the first butterfly has some yuccy antennae that look very disturbing to a person with a general bug-insect-andspider phobia, but the second one is really beautiful. and i've heard the three toed tree sloth is actually a very creative species, there are scientists today who believe most of the renaissance masterpieces are actually copies of three toed tree sloth art.

I like the Cheshire cats photo comix. I think they would lift ones spirit if they were feeling down.

Everyones pictures are great.

I am not an 'artist' I play around with the filters in gimp a bit and got quite a surprise after I had posted something in Photobucket.
2011 must have been when I first started using G'mic. Saw what it could do so tried something for 2012 New Year and got over 10,000 hits in one month. Could be that people were just looking for New Year pics but I had never had such a response

That one is actually a moth, and moths are cool, they're furry and can't bite.

I guess that is because it is so pretty, love the red and gold together.

They aren't perfectly even but I'd love to be able to draw butterflies like that! D:
All my butterflies look like a mature child's drawing. xD

Ah, so that's how the troll girl got started!

I cannot seem to get rid of The Blob. For a long time it was the most viewed deviation on my DA account, and it still fluctuates between #1 and #2. It's not even a scene from the book anymore. Oh well.

The same character was resurrected a month later in another drawing that I liked much more, but never really gained much popularity. The original version is still alive on gimpchat, although I just realized I never posted the final version here.

I'm now realizing most of my examples of mismatches are older works. I suppose I now just have a better sense of what to expect.

@merrak:
The blob is really cool though, it has a Cthulhu-esque feel to it and thus makes that image a bit more creepy than many other of your works.
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Griatch