Step 1: Use a big brush to draw a blob that roughly resembles a silhouette of the shape that you envisioned. At times use eraser to shape it up a little, but not too much. Here I erased bits inside to give it some sense of what the outline will be.

In this case it was a 16th-17th century horseman, I am happy enough with the resulting blob considering I used no reference.

Step 2: Now create a new layer and draw the rest of the damn sprite.

First the outline, 1 pixel width - do not blindly stick withe the blob's exact shape, make adjustments where needed. Then grab the bucket and add some color fills.

Step 3: Animation! If you do not wish to skip this step then you are a bit of a masochist.

Here I only relocated a few pixels to create slight impression of wind doing its work on this person's clothes and hair. That's 15 minutes spent on something no one will notice, but it will make their subconsciousness see the sprites as something alive, hopefully.

Step 4: Notice that something is missing, like the 4th leg. Try to add it, but conclude it is impossible to do so without making a mess, considering the resolution and the horseman's right leg. Abandon any idea of the fourth leg. In your imagination, proceed to defend yourself against accusations that only an AI generator could get the number of horse's legs wrong. Then calm yourself down with the notion that no one will bother to make such accusation against art this trashy.

Some hours later, notice an even bigger issue. In this case perhaps you forgot that horses have tails. You did had a feeling that something is off with that horse's butt. It somehow resembled a human's butt, and now you know why. At least no one will accuse you of AI generation now, for even the computers know that horses have tails.

I hope this humble tutorial will help some programmers who are aspiring artists to reach their goal of drawing a sprite.