User blog comment:Angel Emfrbl/Getting discouraged/@comment-32500188-20140720160605

Oh darn, don't let that get you too far down. I still have folks from time to time running across some of my old artwork from my Tenchi Muyo fan days... and that was when I was even worse with human proportions than I am now. XD All it takes is a favorite from one person with enough interested watchers to drag it back into the light of day and potentially rack up even more, so I wouldn't be surprised if that's what happened with your Raiden sketch.

And yeah, a lot of this does actually have to do with the fan art aspect when you think about it a bit more... most of the time, folks are coming through looking for artwork of recognizeable/famous characters and franchises when it comes to the search engine there in general. Even if it isn't your best show of skill, when folks that find any type of artwork (old or new) see something they like about it overall, they're more than likely to take note of it or add it to their favorites/collections... in some rare cases, it's for the love of the content included, not the overall quality.

(I do like your bird drawing, by the way... did you use pastels as your medium?)