I just recently updated a work of mine again, and a friend mentioned to me that it’s something they like about me, that I never really leave an artwork that I’d previously considered finished, behind, and that I update them every few years.

I realized that this definitely is something that I don’t see many people do, and so I wanted to take a moment to tell peple about my mindset, and why I do this.

Let’s start with the artwork in question Succubine (shown above), as this artwork probably has the most revisions done to it since I first created the piece in 2020.

Originally, this artwork started as a commission.
The client paid a deposit on the piece, and was super responsive, and then the day before I completed the work, the client vanished.
I spent months trying to reach out and get his final approval, and close the project out, but I never heard from him again.

I had never experienced this situation before- but I couldn’t do anything with the art until I got a response because when it comes to commissions, the finished works (and it WAS finished, as far as the commission parameters were concerned) generally don’t get posted until they have been approved by the client and final payment has been accepted.
So I was in a situation where the piece felt like it was in limbo- and I stil have no idea what happened with the client. I honestly have a feeling their health gave out, because there didn’t seem to be ANY negativity involved in the process- the client was beaming at every update. Vanishing didn’t make any sense at all.

Anyway, after nearly a full year, I decided that there was nothing to be done. I couldn’t just sit on the work forever, and I DID like a lot about it (even though the commission parameters themselves weren’t really my jam), so I decided to essentially cannibalize the commission and rework it into something that was a bit more my speed, as a tier-reward for my Patreon (which is going to be revived soon) subscribers.

Here are the first two versions: What the client ordered, on the left, and my revised version that felt more like an Ash Something original artwork on the right.

When you compare these two images, a lot about them is the same. I changed next to nothing about the figure herself, but I never really liked the hair style of the original: Sometimes clients will ask for odd details (and I’m happy to do them) But since this piece was left unclaimed by the client and I was now working out a version of it for myself, the hair had to go. IN the process of creating the new version, I changed the details to give her black hair and a more natural hairstyle, slapped a leathery wing on her and changed her skin to be a bit less human-colored.
The new version was finally given a name (as I generally name the piece after the client accepts it, and that never happened)- Succubine.

From here, I didn’t really think about the piece a lot, but over the next couple years of me using the artwork everywhere- for marketing, on my website, etc, and constantly looking at it there were a lot of things about it that I juse wasn’t happy with. And the more I looked at it the more I wanted to change.
I didn’t want to scrap it and create a new version from scratch- I would save that kind of thing for new works- but THIS work, I wanted to keep in my portfolio; Just not with the details I hated about it.

So then, 2023 rolls around and partway through the year I have a bit of time and end up deciding, “you know what, I’m gonna change some stuff about it finally. I’ve wanted to for ages, may as well do it.” And the the first major edit happened, followed very quickly by a second 2024 revision- both of which are shown below.

The major changes to this artwork in 2024 were the addition of a second wing- (originally the one wing was meant to be abstact or implied, but the longer I looked at it the more like I felt like having just one wing was a mistake- even with it having been an active decision) and the change to her face, which made her look a bit softer and more seductive while still implying her maturity. On top of this, I decided to make the wing feel more like a wind by giving it some transparency, and eventually changed her skintone to be more of a blue hue while added a blue overlay/wash to the latex as well. To me, these color changes make her look less sickly and more inhuman, which was the original intent- however the more details I added the more the greens in the original version were pulled out. Color theory can be a bitch sometimes.

With these corrections in place, I was honestly happy with the work, and didn’t really think I would ever want or need to change it again. I was ready to call the work done, and relegate it to a pile of art that I wouldn’t touch again.

But time makes fools of us all, and I spent a good portion of my time between this fourth draft and today working my ass off on art, oncreasing my detail levels, learning new techniques, and before I realized it, May 2025 was upon us and there was a bunch of small things about the piece that I wanted to change.
I wouldn’t have gotten to this point again so quickly if it weren’t for the 2025 Restructure that I’m going through- where for my portfolio I actually have been pulling aside a lot of artworks that I want to revise, add my new 2025 logo to, and slap into my portfolio, including a bunch of pieces that never made it into the portfolio because of small issues I had with the works that were just glaring problems to me even if no one else saw them.

And so, as I sorted my new portfolio out and decided what things I wanted to change about which artworks, eventually I landed on this one. The plan was just to slap the 2025 watermarks on it and call it a day, but I had to keep puling the piece up during the sorting, and since I was in that mindset of looking for issues I had with art that I needed to change, they flooded in when I looked at this piece.
For one thing, the original artwork was topless, and I hadn’t created an NSFW version of the piece since I started using it in my portfolio- but with me now having a space here on the website (in progress, subscribers only) to showcase my NSFW works, now seemed like the perfect time to create one. But that was just a passing thought, as I felt like I needed to give Succubine some TLC before even getting to that point.
Which leads us to this final, fifth (for now) draft, of Succubine:

Now, I feel like doing a side by side comparison of this version with the fourth draft wouldn’t make the changes all THAT noticable, if you were to try and pinpoint all of them- but each minuscule change was done because there were air raid sirens going off in my mind about them.

First off, the hair. It looks a lot more lush and lustrous now, right? The flat half-assed detail of the hair has always clashed with the detail level of the latex to me, and it wasn’t even intentionally that I hadn’t updated it until this year- I just kept forgetting because the OTHER changes I was making during each revision where so much bigger in the moment that I was too stoked to have corrected them, and it overwrote my intent to also edit the hair.

On top of that, the collarbone was misaligned in all four of the prior versions, so I have now moved it to the center of her chest and pulled her neck back with it, so no longer is her collarbone centered above her left breast.
I also added shading to her face, along with errant strands for her hair to give her that messy look, and slap a but more visual interest into her face.
Finally, I adjusted the coloration of the figure again, and softened her features even further. While I did like the harder edges of her forehead and cheekbone from the third and fourth drafts, I wanted her to look ethereal and (as I keep saying) inhumane. A succubus is supposed to be a somewhat spiratual being, which, depending on the mythology, could be something akin to a Vampire, a Fae, or a Djinn, and so having her look somewhat supernaturally attractive (even to the point where there’s a level of uncanny valley going on) wouldn’t be remiss- so those are the changes I made to her face, giving her almost a glow with the redesicn. I also changed the proportions of her nose and mouth so that her expression is less “Come Hither” and more “I dare you.”
And then, I fixed a big issue with her face that I hadn’t even realized until this edit- her chin looked broken. In the prior drafts, the right side of her jaw cut up towards her ear/cheekbone too soon, which would have been fine if her head positioning was turned more to the left, but her eyes, nose, and mouth all imply that she’s facing head-on to the viewer, which means I needed to make both sides of her jawline more symmetrical with each other.
Once I got those changes laid in, I was finally able to work out the NSFW versio- and this was a whole process, as I had to overlay her nude chest from the earliest version, update it to include proportion changes from the newer versions, then make the lighting on both the latex and the bare chest match each other.
In the process of doing all of this, a LOT of corrections happened to her chest, including almost an entire restructure of the glare on the latex that makes the form of her breasts actually make more sense (and light the “anatomy” [nipples] up on both versions).
All in all, this final run of edits on the piece took me around ten hours, ending with me completely forgetting to turn a layer back on when I initially posted this version on my socials, having to go back and turn that layer on, then realizing that the form of the wings looked flat with the new details and adding some new violet highlights and new shadows to the wing.

And so, as everything stands, this was the final progression of the artwork from start to finish:

And so now we come to today, and the point of my writing.

It’s a common thing for an artist to call a work done when it’s done and then never think about it again, but for me, when I’m doing art every piece is a learning process- and while there are absolutely some things that I just need to call a problem to address in future pieces, there are often problems that occur on pieces that I just LOVE, and want to be able to do the piece justice with, even if it’s a few years later.

And that’s where the philosophy of Living Works, mentioned in the title of this post, comes into play.
I am a living and breathing person, and my art grows and evolves over time. The artwork I can do today vs the artwork I could do 5 years ago are vastly different monsters. My tools have improved. The skills I have at my disposal have improved. I am a different person, and I want my art to reflect who I am, what my goals are, and the like.
And because of this I never consider any artwork I’ve done ACTUALLY done. I just consider it ready to show to my friends, fans and followers.

This is another difference between myself and other artists, that I’ve noticed. In general, artists don’t like to show their work until they are 100% happy with it in the moment- but I have this obsessive and nagging personality where I hyper-focus on details of things. I critique my own work violently while I’m drawing it, and when I break down the process or talk about my work after the fact, a lot of people get taken aback by how hard on myself I can be. And I try to tell people that’s just part of my process- I love my work, even when I hate certain details or aspects of it.
Sometimes I just don’t have the skills yet to make it look how I want it to. Sometimes I just don’t have the energy because I’ve spent something like 50 hours working on it and I KNOW I need to be working on other projects, and it’s starting to get in the way.
Sometimes, even with as overly-analytical as I am, I just miss details or forget things becuase another part of the work took so much more of my attention.

There are a thousand thing that could make me think an artwork isn’t good enough for MY standards, and because of that I’ll want to edit or change it eventually. I don’t want to redo the entire piece from scratch because it’s not about making a newer better piece, but about keeping the work in question relevant and up to date with my abilities- and keeping that work in my portfolio when everything else I’ve created more recently otherwise blows it out of the water.
Because I love my art, and I love the pieces I’ve done, so I want to keep showcasing them- but I want them to be able to all contend with each other and be similarly recieved by viewers to each other. I don’t want to have 5 new artworks on the front row of my portfolio followed by an artwork that I personally love but is from five years ago and when put side-by-side with the newer works looks like trash.
I want to give that work its due, and show how important it is to me. I often use that mentality to fuel these revisions so that I can also try out new techniques I’ve learned on these older works, and I use them as tests and examples for myself when I need to try out NEW techniques, so that I don’t have to create a whole new drawing from scratch just to practice a technique before turning around and starting to use it on commissions.

There are a thousand reasons, but if I were like many of the artists I knew who waited until they were 100% happy with a work they’ve done before they posted it (or happy enough that they would be fine never touching or chaning it again), then I would NEVER post my art. Transforming the original Hair Pinup into today’s version of Succubine would have taken me upwards of 100 hours between starting the second draft of it and this version, back in 2020-2021, because the skill level and techniques, and understanding of the art programs that I’ve developed in those 4-5 years were fundamental in my ability to make it look like it does now.
I would have had to sit down and edit everything by hand, scrap the piece and start parts over. I would have ground myself into a wall and then stopped to focus on anything else, because I was burnt out, and it wouldn’ have been fun or interesting. It would have just been me beating my head against a wall.

Instead, I posted it when it felt like it was more my style, and when I felt like it was the best I could do at the time.
And then, nearly three years later, when I realized that my skill level had changed substantially, and that the things I hated about it before were WELL within my capablities not just to do but to do in a reasonable timeframe, I pulled it back out and made the changes.

And I want to comment here that I am not saying my way is better than that of other artists, or that having a Living Portfolio where an artist gives themselves that freedom to go back in the vaults and update works is the Better Option™. If anything it’s more that I’m recognizing that my ADHD brain is a bit wonky and I have to have these views if I want to be any kind of a successful artist.
Most people in the various art fields out there likely see me posting edited versions of work every couple months and be like “Wtf why” but before I realized “It’s my art, I can do whatever the fuck I want with it” I actually DIDN’T love my art.

I spent over a decade hating every piece I put out because I WANTED my art to look like Frazetta or Luis Royo, but only 1 in every 10 pieces did in 2020, the same year I did the original Hair pinuplooked better than this:

Which is why Succubine is the only work originally from 2020 that’s in my current portfolio while the rest of the works look like this:

And when I bring this up, there are those who will say “Oh but I like [art like the works I did in 2020] and would love to see more like that!”
But I have a goal in mind and a particular style and detail level I’ve been aiming for all this time. Specifically something like these:

And it’s not a matter, to me, of whether the art I was producing was good or bad. I’m happy if/when people see even the works I hate the most and love them.
But instead it’s about intent, and ideals. I don’t compare myself to these artists and think “Man my art is so much worse than theirs.” I don’t hate on my art and beat myself up about it.
Instead I think, with each new piece, “How can I use this work as a springboard to get myself closer to that ideal.”
And when an artwork falls short of what I know I can do, in the moment, I don’t consider it to be a good representation of my art, or myself, and I don’t feel the need to show it off- BUT:
If the piece falls short of that intent but there’s something about it that feels or looks like I could potentially build it into that ideal, like the Hair Pinup artwork did, then I see no reason not to start building off of that by updating the piece every so often to get it closer and closer to that ideal.

Anyway, this has been a long and rambling post, and I only really made it on a whim- though I’m hoping to bring more posts like this to you all in the near future.
To sum everything up, I just love going back into the vaults and updating older works because I see something in them that makes me feel like they can help me acchieve my goals if I continue to rework them.
And it’s not like these pieces are canonized works that are published as book covers or the like- they’re just sitting here staring at me for months or years at a time- and at the end of the day there isn’t a single person or force in the universe who can tell me “Hey, you own that art because you made it- but you can’t change it. It has to stay how it was when you first created it or you’re going to hell.”

At least not a person or force in the universe that I wouldn’t laugh out the door for the suggestion.

I hope you enjoyed this glimpse into my mind and process a bit, and I hope to have more like this for you all soon.
All the love, and as always, I appreciate your continued support and look forward to everything we create together!