Recap: My 30 Day Art Challenge

July 31, 2020 Kat Impossible14 Comments

I posted about this challenge at the half-way point already (read more about it here), but now the challenge is done and I just wanted to recap what all went down and share some more of my art!

STATS

I am happy to announce that I have managed to write more than 13K words this past month. I know that it’s not nearly as much as many reach during their NaNoWriMo challenge or camp sessions, but it catapults me to over 35K words for my current WIP (a YA contemporary), which means I am more than halfway through what I want the first draft to be in terms of length.
I will admit that I skipped out on writing during a couple of the last days of the challenge. I was just so stuck with where I wanted to go and wanted to do some plotting. I really wasn’t sure what to do in the last third of the story, to make sure it actually had tension and wasn’t just trickling along. Therefore, I plotted, which is writing-related, but had no word count to speak of.

I drew a total of 14 more drawings since the last update. I followed my own advice and didn’t overdo it by trying to complete a drawing per day. Sometimes I would do the line work on one day and then the colors on the next. It definitely helped me feel less stressed about it, while I was still doing something daily.

REALIZATIONS

I think I already covered quite a lot of the realizations last time and they still sound true to me. Doing everything all the time is impossible, external validation helps and so on, but I will try and tell you a bit more anyway.

Forcing yourself to do something every day will yield results, but not necessarily good ones. I am happy I did the challenge and it really got my creative juices flowing again, but there are days where you just don’t have it in you. I still ended up doing my writing (or writing related activity) and drawing every single day, but the results weren’t always something I was happy with. Accepting that not everything will be perfect is another thing you need to learn as an artist, but it’s still frustrating when things don’t work. Just make sure that doesn’t deter you.
It’s perfectly okay to draw something because you know it has an audience. While I didn’t stick to just Stargirl portraits in the end, the cast and characters still made up the majority of what I drew. I just knew, and clearly saw in my stats, that these posts worked a lot better and make up the posts that perform the best. The fact that the cast likes to interact with that stuff helps too, of course. So, I don’t see why I shouldn’t lean into doing something, even if it seems repetitive in terms of motif, knowing that there’s a group of people who will hype it up.

Try to make yourself do something new and get out of your comfort zone! It’s obvious that I only did portraits, however, I leaned more into doing pencil instead of watercolor work again, which wasn’t something I felt too comfortable with earlier. And I also started experimenting again with gold/silver foil and am really happy with the results.

DRAWINGS

This time it’s really a mix of things! There’s Jeanine Mason from Roswell, New Mexico, cast and characters from Stargirl (where I often made sure to focus on characters/scenes that were important for the airing episode) as well as Bess from Little Voice, the weeping monk from Cursed and two self-portraits (one experimental and one more traditional).

I hope you enjoyed this look into my challenge! Feel free to ask me anything about it! In hindsight, I think it was more about being consistent than making progress with my skill set, although I think I came into my style some more as well.

Never Have I Ever – Writing Tag!

July 20, 2020August 8, 2021 Kat Impossible20 Comments

One of my favourite blogger buddies, The Orang-utan Librarian, has tagged me for the Never Have I Ever Writing Tag. I read their answers and it was great to read and I implore you to check out the post yourself, that is, after you read mine, because this is going to be fun!

The original was created by the Long Voyage – so definitely check out that here!

NEVER HAVE I EVER …

. . . started a novel that I did not finish.

Ha! That’s a good one!! I started about 15 different stories and finished one of them. My track record in that department is abysmal.

. . . written a story completely by hand.

I … don’t think so? I think I started stories and maybe I’ve written a short story here or there by hand, but definitely not a full one. I already get annoyed with regular editing, I can’t imagine having to transfer everything to my laptop first.

. . . changed tenses midway through a story.

Not on purpose. I think, sometimes, when I return to a story after a long time, I have to get back into the tense maybe and mess it up a bit. But never on purpose.

. . . not researched anything before starting a story.

What is research? No, in all honesty, I probably should do research sometimes, but I love winging it and then despairing in the middle of the story because I have no clue what I am doing. I really do the bare minimum sometimes …

. . . changed my protagonist’s name halfway through a draft.

Nope, not the protagonist’s name, but definitely some side characters.

. . . written a story in a month or less.

YES! The one and only story I ever finished writing – Break Up Buddy – was one I did during NaNoWriMo. I was so proud to have finished it in a month and I still am. I admire people that just throw out stories in days or weeks (and there are more than you might think).

. . . fallen asleep while writing.

I don’t think so?

. . . corrected someone’s grammar irl / online.

Guilty as charged. I’m not running around correcting everyone all the time, but sometimes I just couldn’t not say anything? Most of the time I just keep it to myself, especially since I make plenty of mistakes myself.

. . . yelled in all caps at myself in the middle of a novel.

Like … “started writing in all caps unrelated to the story, because I was frustrated with myself”-all caps? That’s not really something I do?

. . . used “I’m writing” as an excuse.

I just don’t think that people leave me alone or listen to me when I say that I am writing. At least I know a certain someone who will interrupt me like a thousand times, even if I have made it clear that I was trying to focus on writing. Guess that excuse doesn’t fly with people in my life?

. . . killed a character who was based on someone I know in real life.

I’m not even sure I’ve killed a character on page yet, so that’s a no? But also, no one is based on someone I personally know. On actors? That’s a whole different story … but not actual real life friends and/or enemies.

. . . used pop culture references in a story.

These questions should be so easy to answer, but I really have to think hard about them. I am pretty sure there must have been some kind of reference, right? Something to indicate a time period? I just literally can’t think of a single example …

. . . written between the hours of 1am and 6am.

100% YES!

. . . drank an entire pot of coffee while writing.

I don’t drink coffee ever, so that’s a clear no from my side. (Tea all the way!)

. . . written down dreams to use in potential novels.

I actually have a designated journal for my dreams. They are wild sometimes, people! I still like the timey-wimey one where Adam Driver turns out to be my son, but I am technically younger than him? We shall, however, never mention the dolphin story again. That was borderline body horror and that’s not my genre …

. . . published an unedited story on the internet / Wattpad / blog.

Yes, yes and yes? There used to be this website called figment, where I posted a lot of my really, really old stuff. But also recently, totally!

Arcadia is on wattpad. Click here to read it!

Dreamer was on wattpad, but is not published there anymore …

The witchy WIP is published on a private blog that’s password protected. However, friends can request the password and I’m pretty easygoing in sharing it.

. . . procrastinated homework because I wanted to write.

Absolutely! I have to agree with the Orang-utan Librarian here, I sometimes even spaced out in class to write my story. And honestly, even at work from time to time (imagine me doing retail work and there being zero customers for over an hour).

. . . typed so long that my wrists hurt.

That happens so easily, but also, I just don’t have the best set up for writing.

. . . spilled a drink on my laptop while writing.

Thank the heavens that never happened!!! THE HORROR!

. . . forgotten to save my work / draft.

No? I think I forgot to save something for school a couple times, but never the really important stuff aka my stuff.

. . . finished a novel.

As in, written a beginning, middle and end to a story? Yes. As in, edited the story to make it presentable and potentially marketable? No. no no no.

. . . laughed like an evil villain while writing a scene.

I WISH!

. . . cried while writing a scene.

I was close, but I don’t think so?

. . . created maps of my fictional worlds.

YES! But funny enough, not for a fantasy world, but rather a contemporary novel instead. I just printed out maps from Google maps from places that I’ve been to and liked/lived at. It was hilarious in hindsight.

. . . researched something shady for a novel.

I think I researched some illnesses and symptoms. Or “what to do when someone has a seizure”, but that’s not really all that shady, is it?

I TAG THEE

I would love for the sister-writer-duo Nyx and Marie to do this tag and also Caro!

I hope you enjoyed this tag and if you feel like doing it yourself, GO FOR IT! I’d love to chat some more in the comments and also feel free to ask me anything, if you want to know more!

Half-Time Check In: My 30 Day Art Challenge

July 16, 2020 Kat Impossible11 Comments

For those of you who missed the announcement, I have been challenging myself to draw and write every single day starting July 1st. It was very important to me to lean more into my creative side and to push myself even when I wasn’t feeling it all the time. Having now surpassed the half-way mark, I thought it was time to check in on the progress etc.

STATS

I have decided to keep writing my Football WIP! Coincidentally, July 1st was also the start of Camp NaNoWriMo, which meant that I had the perfect tool to track my writing with their website. Honestly, my motivation for drawing was much higher than for writing, because I stopped at a tough chapter back in May. But I still wrote every single day and made a whooping progress of 7,364 words in total so far!

As intended with this challenge, I have also managed to draw every single day. I completed 12 drawings (most of them full watercolor portraits) and sketched with pencil but not in way I would like to showcase the other days.

REALIZATIONS

There’s a couple things I learned from this so far and I really would like to share as well! It will also be fun to see if I still think the same once I have completed the 30 days.

I can’t do everything all the time! This was probably the hardest one to come to terms with. If I draw every single day and if I write too, that amounts to the time a regular person would spend at a full time job. As much as I wanted to read all the books, write all the blog posts and watch all the movies and TV shows, it’s impossible to do it all. There’s not enough time and quite frankly also not brain power/creative energy to get to every single thing.
While I am fairly self-motivated, external validation helps! I would definitely be lying if I said that validation from others doesn’t help. I really do appreciate every single like and comment, because it has helped me so much in keeping up with this challenge. Also, I went from 160 followers to 200+ in two weeks even though I have had my account for years, so this is just mind-boggling to me (click here if you want to follow my art insta too).
I will post my drawings at the end of this post, but you will see that they are ~~mostly~~ exclusively about the cast from Stargirl. This is not just because I adore the show (which I do), but because the cast is incredibly friendly and appreciative of fan work. It’s so lovely to do this and get the recognition from the people you drew.

Some things won’t ever look the way I want them to, and that’s okay! Having done this challenge, it has helped me so much with accepting that not everything I put out into the world needs to be perfect or flawless. Some things don’t work out the way I want them to, that’s fine and I just need to let it go. So often, people still appreciated my work, even when I didn’t love it. (I’m being serious here, I maybe really really like three of the drawings from the past two weeks …….)
Writing is hard (duh!), but editing exists for a reason. I was always someone who was very focused on working on a single project, until things got hard and I dropped it. I also always wrote very linearly, but not this time. I was really super stuck, but I didn’t confine myself to just keep writing a chapter I disliked, but rather wrote other scenes I was looking forward to. The chapter I finally managed to conclude and still don’t like won’t deter me any more either, because that is what editing is for. Just because I don’t currently know how to fix things doesn’t mean that I won’t ever know.

DRAWINGS

As I’ve already mentioned, all of these drawings are from the show Stargirl or its cast. (I am pretty sure I will do a full currently watching post about the show once I am done with the entire season, because I really do love everything about it.) There is only one more drawing that I didn’t include, because it was a private one I drew for a family member and don’t think it should be online.