Some drawings never really leave your brain. They just sit quietly in old folders waiting to crawl back out again later.

Returning to horror art after stepping away from drawing for several years has honestly felt both exciting and intimidating. For a long time before starting Dreaded Designs, I barely drew at all. Drawing used to be one of the biggest parts of my life, especially when I was younger, but after going through one of the toughest periods I’ve ever experienced, I completely lost motivation and stepped away from it for a couple of years.

Originally, my goal was to work somewhere within the gaming industry. Video games have always been a huge passion of mine, and most of my older artwork reflected that. I spent years drawing video game characters, portraits, dinosaurs, and creature designs inspired by the things I loved growing up.

But over time, I realised the industry itself wasn’t really what I imagined it would be. Losing that direction also made me feel like I’d lost a huge part of my creative identity for a while, and eventually, I just stopped drawing altogether.

Oddly enough, horror art is what ended up pulling me back into it again.

A massive part of that inspiration came from games like Oddworld and Little Nightmares. I’ve always loved strange creature designs, unsettling environments, exaggerated proportions, and characters that feel unsettling, strange, and oddly sympathetic at the same time.

The worlds in those games feel uncomfortable in such a creative way. Nothing looks perfectly clean or normal. Everything has texture, personality, distortion, and atmosphere – and I think that’s what slowly pushed me toward horror artwork without me even fully realising it.

Recently, I started digging through some of my older drawings again and found this old drawing of Munch from Oddworld: Munch’s Oddysee:

Looking back at it now, I can already see hints of the direction I would eventually move toward. Even when I was mainly drawing game characters and random creatures, I was always far more interested in weird designs than realistic perfection.

At the same time, I also spent years focusing heavily on graphite realism and portraits.

Most of my older work stayed within that safer comfort zone because graphite was the medium I always felt most confident using.

I also went through a phase of being completely obsessed with drawing dinosaurs and prehistoric creatures. Creature anatomy, skin texture, teeth, scales, and exaggerated features were always the things I enjoyed drawing most.

Looking back at older drawings like these honestly makes me realise how much confidence I lost after stepping away from art for several years. At the same time though, it also reminds me that those abilities are still somewhere in there – they just feel buried under a few years of self-doubt and rust.

The funny thing is that technically, my style probably hasn’t changed that dramatically over the years. What’s changed more is the kind of atmosphere and emotion I want the artwork to have.

Back then, I almost exclusively used graphite pencils. Everything was cleaner, softer, and much more controlled.

Now though, I really want to experiment more with darker traditional mediums like charcoal and carbon pencil. They feel far more suited to the atmosphere and texture I want horror art to have. The rough textures, deep shadows, messy marks, and darker contrast all create a completely different mood compared to standard graphite.

One thing I’ve really struggled with recently is confidence.

After stepping away from drawing for a couple of years, it honestly feels strange trying to rebuild those skills and creative instincts again. I can still picture the kind of artwork I want to create in my head, but sometimes my hand feels like it’s forgotten how to keep up with it.

That’s probably one of the most frustrating parts of returning to art after a long break. You remember what drawing used to feel like, but rebuilding that confidence and consistency takes time.

At the same time though, I think stepping away from drawing also completely changed my relationship with art. I’m far less interested in chasing perfection now, and much more interested in atmosphere, experimentation, strange ideas, darker textures, and artwork that actually feels something instead of simply looking technically “correct.”

Sometimes the imperfections actually make horror artwork feel stronger.

That’s something I’m trying to embrace a lot more now instead of overthinking every single line.

One thing I’ve realised while rebuilding the blog is that I don’t necessarily want Dreaded Designs to feel overly polished or corporate. I want it to feel creative, experimental, strange, and genuinely inspired by the things that made me fall back in love with art in the first place.

So even though the tutorials are still temporarily slower while the huge blog overhaul continues, I do want to keep sharing more artwork, experiments, inspirations, older sketches, strange ideas, and creative progress through these journal posts.

Honestly, it just feels good to be drawing again.