packrat poll

[ratcreature]

I'm wondering what other people do with their preliminary sketches and stuff. For each actually finished piece of fanart I end up with a pile of more or less awful and hideous half abandoned sketches, rough composition doodles, sketches to work out body parts, perspective, color, textures, sometimes just a couple, sometimes dozens and more. I have packrat tendencies in general, so it is hard for me to throw things out, but otoh, what do I need a pile with failed sketches of mishapen half-finished stuff for, once I have finished the work?

So I'm curious what other people do:

[Poll #1408258]
(ETA: I didn't realize the crossposter would just link the poll, even though I can insert polls here too. I now included it manually here, or you can go to the DW version: View poll: packrat poll.
ETA2: Apparently one can't insert a poll when editing an entry? What? so I reposted here, sorry. *makes note to x-post polls manually the next time*)

Comments

[an-kayoh.livejournal.com]

I keep everything if I think the finished product was good. Otherwise, I erase any trace of the work from existence. Unless it's a good teaching example ("how to not draw brick buildings in perspective!").

[ratcreature]

Sometimes I like the finished thing, but to get there it took a bunch of horrible failed scribbles on which you can't even see a lot.

Somehow my process is mostly founded in inertia. Right after I finish something, I'm too lazy to bother sorting through things to decide whether I want to keep stuff, so I just put it into a pile I shove to the side, then after a while that pile gets in the way, so I dump it into a box... so I end up with boxes of crap layered like sediment.

[an-kayoh.livejournal.com]

I'm having the same problem with knitting right now - stuff made for other people or stuff that I can use never bothers me. It's the one mitten that I never finished a mate for, the socks I never wear, and the baby hats I keep around in case someone shows up suddenly pregnant that seem determined to bury me.

[sholio]

Total packrat, man! I'm getting a little better at throwing out the sketches which are plainly not of use for anything -- though, since I'm also ridiculously frugal, I tend to use them for *more* preliminary sketches (paper has two sides, after all!) and this is another reason why I never throw things away, since my loose sketch paper tends to get covered with notes for stories and preliminary character designs that I actually need to keep for awhile ... and then can never find later, as I am hopeless at filing things.

Because so much of my work is original (graphic novels), I kind of like to keep old sketches for posterity, just as I keep old drafts of my stories. It's fun to go back and see how things have changed over the years, especially if I've forgotten little details like, say, my brief foray into making [x] character a woman, or the exact moment when my fantasy setting turned into sci-fi apocafic, or whatever.

[ratcreature]

A kindred spirit! On my paper there also tends to end up totally unrelated stuff on the same sheet, except that it is often vaguely chronological, just like the piles are, but it ends up like sediment, and I'm not good at finding things again either, and too lazy to sort through the mess.