The year is coming to an end and finally - after almost 3 months in total - I finished the Kinktober challenge. I am a bit irritated that I needed so long for this, but at the same time I am proud of myself for pushing through it completely.

Having finished this challenge presents me a problem: I have no idea where I should go from here artistically. I'm rather hazy about what I should tackle next. I don't consider myself to be bubbling with creativity or ideas, but I do have some things in mind I could start with. However, depending on my decision, this could take a much longer time than I want.

Option 1: Personal work

I could work more on my own (fan-)characters, flesh them out and develop somewhat of a small 'world' around them. How I would do this is still beyond me, I would probably have to make a story or comic out of this if I wanted to keep anyone interested in this. Apart from that I would also need to scrap the OCs which I haven't been working on to thin out the mass of them. Over the past couple of years, I came up with ~ 200 potential OCs and I have worked only on the vast minority of them. There are some characters I would definitely keep, but the overall process would be very time consuming.

Option 2: More NSFW

As everybody knows, 'sex sells'. This is probably the easiest way to keep followers/watchers and/or gain new ones, but also the most platonic way of dealing with art. It would probably nail my image down to nsfw content and people would be even less interested in my other projects. I admit that I prefer to draw nsfw content - at least at the moment. But it's definitely not something I would be able to do forever. I could also imagine it being quite repetetive when people realize that I am not necessarily into the most 'hype' characters to draw porn of.

Option 3: Taking requests/suggestions openly again

Although this could interfere with my Patreon-rewards, it is an alternative to what I've been doing in 2019. I stopped taking those at some point because some actual creeps kept contacting me about it, did not read my rules at all or refused to accept a polite 'No'. So I ended up neglecting more and more of those because people were too lazy and - sorry - stupid.

Option 4: Focus on fanart, maybe comics

Since I want to be able to create short stories and comics in the future, this would be an interesting option as well. Drawing fanart would definitely attract more attention than a story of my own OCs and it would grant me the freedom to have the characters behave in a way relevant to the story/comic. However, this would take a long time because, I admit, I usually am not into most new 'mainstream' or 'hyped' things or topics. This means I would have a really hard time figuring out what I would want to draw fanart of. Also, considering the aspect of drawing, new characters are getting more and more detailed and 'extraordinary' these days, which presents a big load of work when you want to get everything right; plus such fanart can easily backfire when you hit a sore spot in the fandom's perception of the franchise (e.g. nsfw content for Undertale).

Option 5: Focus on progressive improvement

This would be by far the least entertaining thing to do; for me and for followers/watchers. It means that I would have to study things that improve my drawing skills and do a lot of practicing regardless of it being interesting or not, as long as it helps me improve (like drawing a hand 200 times until I 'get it', develop muscle memory etc.). I believe this is something you'd usually do before you start presenting your work to the world and it's definitely something I have to do at some point or in several, short instances. That said, this is probably the option that would take the longest time, not only because it requires hard, steady work but also because it is emotionally frustrating, exhausting and - yes - 'boring'.

Option 6: Something else

Maybe there is something I haven't thought of yet, an idea that would be more enticing for me to work towards. This option would most likely lead me to drawing a lot of random stuff which require inspiration, strong impulses or spontaneous ideas.

I would be thankful for any advice or ideas you guys could give me, because I am at a point where I really don't know where to go from here. Also, including my 'audience' in my work and interacting with those who like what I do is something I would love to do more; it has been a lot of fun for me in the past. ♪

Sorry for the wall of text and thank you a lot, especially if you read through all of this. For the time being, I wish you all a great time for the remainig days of this year and a bright start into 2020! ♥ ♥

That's all for now.