November Improvement Movement

I got a little behind on my Improvement Movement drawings, but here's the belated November prompt - taking a figure drawing and turning it into a character drawing.

Here's the final result!

First I started with a bunch of figure drawing sketches.

Then I highlighted the ones I liked best.

And then here's the rest of the process of sketching start to finish!

And as a bonus, here was the first doodle I tried of Sarah. I didn't really like how this one was coming out, so I didn't finish it.

Amelia Expression Studies

For October's Improvement Movement, the theme is expressions! I decided to get a headstart on this one and did a few extras. I decided to stick with Amelia, since I don't have a lot of various expression drawings of her yet.

These ones I polished a bit more and ended up being the final group.

This was the first group that I decided to leave pretty rough, just as some additional ideas I had while doodling.

Inktober 2019 Results

I finished up Inktober and used the official prompts this year.

Here's all of them together!

And then below are all of them individually:

2020 Plans

Happy 2020, it's a new decade!

Before I start talking about what I plan to do in 2020, I'd like to showcase my improvement from 2004 to 2019:

I always have a lot of plans for how to make the next year better, but the past few years, I notice my comments have been fairly similar with a theme of "I tried to do daily projects less because I had less time to draw." And then every time, I start to feel guilty for not drawing every day and just start doing it anyway. And then October - December comes around and I get burnt out from doing those daily projects.

Well, this year was a little different. Usually, January is a time to start over and feel refreshed, but I was kind of already there in December, and that's because I did things differently.

November and December last year are what I'm basing this year's plans on. In November, I used it as a chance to draw characters every day that would appear in the Eventure that I wrote the last week of November, for NaNoWriMo. It had me anticipating writing that part and really keeping me motivated to keep on working on it because I was excited to write that part. And then it ended up being a really fun week and I liked how that one came out.

In December, I decided to use Digicember as a chance to work on an offline project instead of posting every day. While I didn't end up drawing every day, there were days where I was so excited to work on it that I drew for 7 hours straight without realizing it. And that's the excitement I want to bring back, where drawing is fun!

Posting my art became an afterthought, where I would think "Oh yeah, I haven't posted in a while. I'll post this sketch I did the other day" and it really helped me out mentally. So basically, this year I want to bring that mentality back and really focus on just making art for myself entirely.

I notice that when I'm writing my story or planning out parts of my story, I get more into that zone. And when I'm in that zone, I just want to draw story moments for fun, even if they're quick or sketchy. It just helps me to really visualize these scenes more. And I find that my drawings are overall better when this happens too.

I want to focus more on world-building and writing so that I can naturally create good art. This way, I won't just be creating art to post a sketch a day. Those drawings tend to be more boring and just generic headshots without a lot of storytelling or context. I want to create art with purpose.

So the end of 2019 really helped me realize what I was lacking, and I found out why I felt so unfulfilled. When I'm super in the zone and doing things about The Nays, that's when I'm most happy and motivated to create.

And so for 2020, I don't want to set specific dates or timelines on how often I'm going to write or draw, I just want to do it more often. At the very least, I'd probably like to create something once a month, but we'll see how that goes with life.

And when I say creating something, that could be anything related to my story. It could be working on the website, docs, writing an Eventure, drawing a comic, making a Twine, or anything else!

December has been super productive and enjoyable and I think a lot of that is because I stopped posting art every day on social media. I'd like to start posting again more than I did last month, but maybe I'll make a point to post more sketches or WIPs, and not worry about finished illustrations or stressing about the posting aspect of things. I'm gonna try real hard on that one because I know I say something similar every year. But this time I'm thinking I have more of a reason not to and a direction for what I want instead of just less.

So anyway, those are my thoughts and ideas for 2020. I'm excited to start progressing more in my story, whether that's rewriting old content, or making parts that are completely new. I have a pretty good feeling about this next year.