Set yourself small challenges to reach your goals.
One of my main goals is to become known as a successful freelance illustrator and character designer who specializes in creatures and monsters. Although I already draw monsters, I only seem to draw final images with monsters in, when it comes to sketching monsters I always scrap them or I'm afraid to do it because I don't think they look right, a fear that I know a lot of creatives struggle with.
If you're a freelancer and haven't heard of the 'Red Lemon Club' website, you need to get on it and fast. It's basically a freelancers handbook, all written by freelancer Alex Mathers, it is honestly amazing. I read all of his articles, and upon reading this one I decided that it was time to take a different approach to reaching my goals and set up my own little challenge, the 'Monster Marathon'.
The reason I set this up is because 'getting better at creature design' isn't a goal, it has no limits, and I will be improving my creature design for the rest of my life. However, setting myself a smaller challenge that will force me to draw creatures every day, will in the end, improve my creature design.
So basically the 'Monster Marathon' is a challenge I've set myself to draw a different creature everyday. It doesn't matter what medium it's in, it can be digital, traditional, and even fan art. It may not be me coming up with a creature but it's still a way to practise drawing creatures. Obviously it's also Inktober so it ties in with that nicely and I've been practising inking my creatures too to fit in with that. Today is the 12th day and I even though I have a pretty busy life I'm yet to miss a day and hoping to continue up until Christmas!
If you'd like to join in the Monster Marathon obviously feel free! I've just been tagging mine with #monstermarathon so it would be great to see anyone else's if you did the same! I suggest taking part in Inktober too, it's great fun and an awesome community! Here are some of my favourite monsters I've done so far!