Admin Post: Community Check-In for January 2024

[goss]

Today's the last day of January, and we'd love to have you check in and chat with us. How have things been with you this past month?

Did you sign up for or take part in any fandom activities in January, or have you been working on any personal art projects? Are you currently trying to meet a deadline? Feel free to share upcoming art challenges that have got you excited, any frustrations you've been experiencing, possible goals for the next month, and so on.

Our Round-up of entries for Drawing Challenge #61: Goals & Wishes will be posted later this week, and a new monthly art challenge will go up over the weekend. :)

Challenge 61: Goals

[eye_of_toad]

Title: The 50th Box
Artist: eye_of_toad
Rating: gen
Fandom: none
Characters/Pairings: none
Content Notes: Ballpoint pen (despite the medium being officially frowned upon by "Draw a Box" guidelines.)

This is probably perfect for a January goals challenge, because this is the classic sort of thing that I do. Set a goal. Decide it's hard. Argue with myself whether I even want to keep doing the goal. Make excuses for not doing the goal. Forget I was doing the goal. Find it months later and remember I was trying to do the thing and realize I barely made any progress on it.

I hate "Draw a Box" so much. It's super annoying. I suck at it. I see no evidence that I'm getting any better. The rules feel arbitrary. (Why can't I do this in pencil? Why do I have to put down the perfect line on my first attempt?) But I also know (just like the gym) that the reason I'm failing is probably because I'm being so half-hearted about this. I started this MONTHS ago. My first page of boxes is dated AUGUST. So I'm not sure these first fifty boxes even count since they were spread out over such a long period of time and clearly aren't helping to build muscle memory or hand-eye coordination or whatever it was that drawing 250 boxes is supposed to accomplish.

Opinions? To get the full benefit, do I need to start over and complete 250 boxes within a more reasonable timeframe? Or do I just draw 200 more ugly boxes and call it good enough?