Outlining How to Get This Journey Underway

"My goal is to surprise myself." - Peter William Brown

That quote is probably the best short & sweet summary possible for what I wish to do during this new adventure.  However, I know it would be helpful for me to map out what I'd like to accomplish.

• I want to become proficient at rendering faces showing a wide range of emotions.  Pick up almost any picture book and the blank, staring face so omnipresent in today's mixed media work is practically nonexistent.  The same holds true for comics.
• I must become much more at ease with drawing bodies in a multitude of poses.  That is going to be a serious challenge as I've never taken a figure drawing class.  Practice, practice, practice!
• I need to move from just drawing to illustration.  There is a difference.  Just like drawings, illustrations can be simple or elaborate and can be rendered in any art medium.  However, illustrating is about helping to tell a story, without or without accompanying text.
• I need to work on rendering environments for my characters to inhabit.  One look through my sketchbooks and you think all my characters are posing on snow drifts.
• I need to ease gently but firmly into a daily writing practice, pulling the stuff in my head onto paper.  I haven't written much fiction in a very, very long time so I'm pretty rusty.

Those are some hefty goals.  Notice that "getting published" is nowhere on this list and there's a couple of reasons why: 1) I seriously need to build some skills and confidence before I even think about sending out manuscripts or portfolios and 2) I don't want to have "getting published" as the yardstick for whether or not I've succeeded.  Right now, and for a good long while, I want to focus on the journey.