I've never done NaNoWriMo -- when it reached the threshold of my consciousness I was already writing quite a lot for various publications -- but I participated in Inktober for the first time this year. I'm pretty good about making regular drawing time, but forcing yourself to do an illustration for each day of October is hard, even when I've given myself grace by working on illustrations ahead of the day. However, I do feel like I've gotten better even in just that time frame (I pushed myself to do more finished drawings instead of my more normal sketches), and it has given me the chance to appreciate things about my drawing; normally I'm often self-critical about what could be better, but over the last month I've realized I do some things ... at least better ... than I ever thought I would.
It also has an aspect, probably like NaNoWriMo, that I hadn't fully appreciated before, which is that the schedule means sometimes you have to move on. There have been a couple drawings I've done for the month where I felt like I could keep worrying at them and probably still not like them at all, but because of the schedule, you have to say "welp, that's what it's going to be, then." It's something I think is really healthy, even if I don't always practice it as much as I'd like.
I've never done NaNoWriMo -- when it reached the threshold of my consciousness I was already writing quite a lot for various publications -- but I participated in Inktober for the first time this year. I'm pretty good about making regular drawing time, but forcing yourself to do an illustration for each day of October is hard, even when I've given myself grace by working on illustrations ahead of the day. However, I do feel like I've gotten better even in just that time frame (I pushed myself to do more finished drawings instead of my more normal sketches), and it has given me the chance to appreciate things about my drawing; normally I'm often self-critical about what could be better, but over the last month I've realized I do some things ... at least better ... than I ever thought I would.
It also has an aspect, probably like NaNoWriMo, that I hadn't fully appreciated before, which is that the schedule means sometimes you have to move on. There have been a couple drawings I've done for the month where I felt like I could keep worrying at them and probably still not like them at all, but because of the schedule, you have to say "welp, that's what it's going to be, then." It's something I think is really healthy, even if I don't always practice it as much as I'd like.