What should my artistic process look like? Following the tutorial on the CSW site, I make the head and then I draw blobs. Should I be doing stick figures or trying it out by hand first? I am even worse at sketching, should I be trying to improve my art in other fields to help my pixelling?
Your artistic process is really up to you; regarding the CSW tutorial, that is just a process that can be added in to your artistic process - it doesn't really explain much to inform overall art planning. As to whether you should be trying to improve in other fields.. YES. Every so often on Pixelation, someone observes that pixel art is just an art medium, so things you learn about art in general apply just as much to pixel art, and vice versa.
I personally agree that pixel art is only a medium, and as such, it's often unproductive to aim to become better at pixel art when your general art skills are lacking. I recommend instead, aiming to improve your general skills (in areas like..
of primary importance: Anatomy, perspective, composition.
Of secondary importance: Color Contrast, Light/shadow, Color Tone.)
In particular, I would pick on your identified inability to sketch well. That is absolutely vital to fix; until you can sketch your ideas quickly and with acceptable accuracy, based on my experience you will often end up with wrong intentions -- trying to fix an ill-conceived picture rather than polishing one that makes fundamental sense to you. (btw, there is nothing wrong with doing bad sketches.. it's just a matter of keeping sketching the thing until you get something that works. that's why speed can help a lot.)
You suggest drawing stick figures -- this is a good idea IMO. I like to draw them one after another on a huge canvas (an app like MyPaint that implements an infinite canvas helps) so that I can have them interacting. The repetition also helps me to remember my mistakes and discoveries better.
Hope some of that helps