/ic/ - Artwork/Critique

how do people fit 6-10 hours everyday with a full-time job

>>6443214
I drew from morning until night during the pandemic, no studies, just mindless drawings with references. I avoided simple sketches and went for fully finished with bg. I improved somewhat but it’s not as impressive as i would have wanted. I was a retard for not structuring my sessions with studies.

>>6443217
What else do you do with your free time? A job is only 8 hours a day, sleep is usually 7 hours give or take. So theres 8 hours for travel, chores, drawing and down time.
Helps if you find drawing fun because then it can be included as downtime.

I drew 6-12 hours straight since I was 16. I got sort of famous on DeviantArt when it was still the go-to art community. Does that count as appeal? I kept drawing like an autist but I experimented on techniques too. However, my work didn’t start to get the professional polish until after I started studying seriously at 18. My draftsmanship started to look good around the time I was mid 20s. Then it took a hard dip because I got depressed to a point where I nearly killed myself. I regressed everywhere. I was drawing worse than my DeviantArt years. I had to grind fundies again since 3 years ago, and only caught up to where I was last since 2021 and doing better than ever.

>>6443238
wait its not like riding a bycicle??

>>6443214
Uhhhm well I pretty much became a loser neet in my early 20s and started throwing myself pretty heavily into drawing in order to escape the fact that I had no life and my old high school friends were surpassing me at lightspeed.

Slowly worked my way up to drawing most of my waking hours because I literally had nothing else to do other than stare at a blank wall, play vidya or masturbate. Took me from age 24ish to 28ish to start to fall into a groove of making acceptable, appealing art and doing regular commissions.

Bare in mind I had also drawn all my childhood but just never started studying form and figure drawing until I was 24 or so. And by the way, my figure drawings looked like absolute dog shit when I started and for a long time after. They were stiff and lifeless and filled me with rage all the time. Many times I’d damage my art supplies and rip my drawings up out of sheer frustration.

It was not until my late 20s, early 30s that I started finding my voice and enjoying making shit again. I never went back to academic studies after that. I got as good as I needed to get for what I wanted to do and then started doing it and never looked back.

My art may look like beg-tier shit but at least I never have to do another fucking soul-sucking study again. Needless to say, I don’t miss my 20s - they were filled with seemingly endless quantities of loneliness, failure and frustration. 0/10 wouldn’t go back.

My advice, get your skills and get the fuck out before it kills you.

>>6443429
I like your art, anon. I relate in the sense that I have drawn since I was a child but never took things seriously until very, very recently.
I'm still not good at all but I've been doing figure drawing everyday, working through David Finch's roadmap. Will move on to copying Bridgman twice.

>>6443214
> draftmanship
I was drawing about 8-10hrs a day during weekdays for almost 2 years. I got pretty decent at drawing from imagination, and/or very quickly incorporating refs. The biggest gain was speed. I could make a loose sketch that was intelligible in minutes instead of aimlessly poking around for hours.
>and appeal
My drawings became less appealing the more I drew for myself as time passed on. It’s a combination of no longer needing to do studies of popular/appealing work and being able to draw for myself which does not pander to anyone but me.

>>6443214
Almost nothing aside from speed, I draw coommissions mostly

>>6443214
hardly drawn at all the last 8 months, I either stayed the same or regressed. way easier to improve when you're drawing all day and thinking about art constantly.

>>6443217
They dont. That's why anyone who is 25+ and not a neet will never make it

>>6443214
Very little.
Learning the basics did more for me then 15 years of "just draw".

>>6443214
>draftmanship
you will improve a lot
>appeal
once you get past the beg phase where your drawings look more appealing just because they are more accurate in general, i hit a wall pretty hard in terms of being able to make drawings that weren't just realistic but actually nice to look at. idk anons really fall for the 'no bidya, no anime, 50 pages a day' meme anymore but i basically did studies and life drawings all day to the exclusion of all other forms of media and yeah you unironically do end up like the proko meme if you live like that.
once you start getting somewhat comfortable with your drawings, say maybe a 70% success rate, imo you should start focusing much more on projects that reflect what you actually want to do with your art & simply apply further studies as needed or when you hit plateaus.
>Taking in consideration you already drew as an hobby before and you were mid-high /beg/ before the hard grind program.
hard grind is kind of a meme unless you simply like grinding OR want to go into a grind heavy field like comics or animation or a competitive art school.
it sounds like maybe you are rushing to git gud for one of those kind of reasons, you can get a lot better than you are by grinding, but there will still be a gap between your work and 'pro level' and it isn't a gap than you can simply grind through

>>6443214
I had a period where I drew 10 to 14 hours a day and had enormous gains. I will also tell you that you quickly lose your gains after you quit. You stay 6 months without drawing, you're gonna be fucking shit.

>>6443214
Literally went from stick figures to being able to draw vehicles in perspective in 6 months
The progress is massive

>>6444270
I disagree, I stopped drawing for 2 years and it only took a month to reach prior heights

>>6443364
It probably is, but there's a big difference between riding a bicycle to the grocery store or riding professionally.

>>6444178
Pretty sure you don't need that much time to improve, you just have to not be a retard.

>>6443214
i drew for 8 hours a day average for 10 months religiously, tracking the time to the minute.

to be honest, while you definitely could see the improvement right after that 10 months, i think i had 'study sickness' for a while right after. everything was kind of /mid/ in terms of skill but also no appeal.

i took 4 or so months 'off' from studying (basically i was in animation school at that point so mostly being social and shit) and just drawing maybe 30 minutes to 2 hours a day on average. after a while i feel like the gains from my 10 months of studying caught up with me and i suddenly improved rapidly, out of nowhere, i think it's because my heart got back into it again, as corny as it sounds. after that i was 'learning by doing', attempting to make the shit i really wanted to make. before this point i was so fucking disappointed about the lack of improvement i had from those 10 months but the boost in appeal i got when i started to do the shit i wanted to again was crazy, it felt like it was from nowhere, but those months of grinding where the foundations of it.

pic unrelated

>>6444284
You CAN get back relatively quick, but still those first drawings after a break feel terrible and suck.

>>6443227
yeah so with all the other responsibilities included you get liek 2-3 hours of drawing at best, not 6-10. I think you would need to go into hermit-mode with no regard to your mental well-being or hygiene to be able to grind like that.

>>6444397
The hard work paid off, anon. I love your style!

Diminished returns.
Drawing is a MENTAL exercise more than anything.

Even the most virtuoso violinists will tell you more than 4 hours of practice a day is useless.
So work smarter, not harder. 4 hours is still a lot. And make sure those are STUDYING hours, not DRAWING hours if you want to see progress. Which means you're constantly focused on the things you need to practice, if you're learning color theory, linearting time does not count for those 4h of practice.

>>6443217
You don't.

>>6444817
you can still draw on your days off

>>6443217
6 is pretty doable imo. you can hit 8 or 9 easily if you basically nolife outside of work.
>live on instant meals
>draw during meals and breaks
>draw during commute
>draw all night and get the minimum of sleep or no sleep
depending on the job, you can also sneak in quite a bit of sketching time during non busy periods at work.
you can get close to 3/4 hours of drawing time just between your commute and lazymaxxing through the workday.
at my last true wagie job i was pulling close to 10-11 drawing hours a day but that pace is terrible for your health. the work i put out during that period was pretty shit as well
>>6444817
the trick is that you neglect basically all of those responsibilities

>>6444913
wish i followed this advice before i did 10 hours a day for a month and burned out

>>6445573
>>6444913
drawing is a mental exercise but hand coordination isn't really so if a beginner is studying at 100% focus for 4 hours and then 50% for another 2-3 hours they are still gonna improve very rapidly with those extra hours because they are simply getting more mileage making their hand do what their brain wants.
it is also not necessarily useful to try and emulate a virtuoso or a prodigy because they are by definition exceptional
>chopin only needed 2 hours of practice so why should i do more!
>>6445573
on the bright side anon, learning to work like that is very valuable in crunch which is something you will inevitably have to go through if you do professional art jobs. you also probably made a lot of gains you might not recognize for a while.

>>6444018
Same here, but I'm happy at my current skill

>>6445573
Anon, you shouldn't regret such an accomplishment. Everyone wishes for the IDEAL method, but getting gains is better than not. Everyone makes mistakes, you are more fortunate than those who made the mistake of not practicing at all.

>>6445616
>it is also not necessarily useful to try and emulate a virtuoso or a prodigy because they are by definition exceptional
>chopin only needed 2 hours of practice so why should i do more!
It's the opposite, anon. Even geniuses who breathe and eat music say there is an UPPER limit.
And music involves muscle memory as well, which is developed over days and months, there isn't much you can retain from hours of practice cause the brain needs to solidify each part of your practice in chunks.

If you study too much, you will burn out like anon above, finding a balance is better in the long run.
Although I do agree learning to crunch might have been useful. I am only able to draw for such extended periods of time when a deadline arrives, for maybe 3 days or so, not an entire month.

Also as a similar question, how do I stop seething that artist mutuals who started drawing years before me are still better than me despite grinding and trying to produce good art as well as I can? That feeling of "being permanently below them" just makes me feel like shit at this point and it makes me wonder if thinking we'll ever be on the same skill level in the future is a bullshit idea.

>>6445726
i think what is being lost here is that musicians use a different definition of 'practice' which only includes time spent playing alone/doing scales & rudiments etc but they will spend just as many hours or more in rehearsals
from a julliard student blog:
>Our rehearsals would range between 3 and 6 hours a day in order to get all of the specifics clear and solid.
when i was serious about music as a kid, playing in jazz bands meant going to 6 hours of rehearsal and then being expected to practice at home outside of that.
also a virtuoso is basically maintaining their skill, they've passed the grinding phase of their career, you will get similar answers from a pro artist who says shit like 'i only draw when i'm in the mood' because the question of 'how do you study?' is fundamentally the wrong one when what /beg/s actually want to know is 'how did you study to get to where you are?'
the actual answer for how long you should study as an artfag is as long as it takes for you to understand the concept and not so long that you lose focus.
ime burnout has less to do with workload than your working environment, stress levels and ability to maintain your mind and body. most important is the kind of work you are doing; if you spend 5 hours a day drawing shit you don't enjoy you will burn out much faster than if you draw shit that excites you for 10.

>>6445738
There's a certain point that artists reach where they are "good" and the rating of their skill it's a matter of subjectivity. Just get "good", and maybe someone might think you're on par or better than your mutuals.

>>6445738
desu most of my mutuals who were better than me when i started have completely stagnated in their skill level for the past 10 years. most people basically git gud 'enough' to have a liveable income and then don't really study anymore.
even if you do keep studying you hit a threshold where more rendering or doing anatomy more betterer doesn't really change your output much so the only real substantive gains are changes in style and experimentation

>>6445806
Just to add to my previous statements instead of just saying stuff, here's a pro musician doing a Q&A citing a 5 hour upper limit (physically):
https://youtu.be/h3xEHigWShM?t=103

Your 6 hours of rehearsal were probably not fully playing; where there are groups, there are interruptions. Information exchange is not efficient. Even by ourselves we tend to drift. If you have an upcoming concert soon, rehearsal times are also more aggressive, kinda like crunch time.

If you set aside an hour weekly to prepare your study material for the whole week, you can do bouts of focused practice without worrying too much.

However, those bouts rarely last longer than 90 minutes or 2 hours.
Taking a 20 minute or so break between these 90 minutes makes it so that you can go for another cycle of 90 minutes, but most people burn their daily quota of neurons after the first cycle. Really motivated people can go for maybe up to 3 bouts of learning, and it's easier if you're learning different topics on each.

Glad to see some solid talking points disagreeing with me, ultimately I don't discredit what you're saying, either your advice or my advice could get people places more than just flopping around like headless chickens. Hell, if you have the stamina, combine mindful, efficient practice with long hours, just be sure you monitor your stress levels.

>>6445990
Oh, and here's a cool article:
https://bulletproofmusician.com/how-many-hours-a-day-should-you-practice/

>>6445990
i feel like we're missing eachother on definitions more than we are actually disagreeing. like its the difference between saying 'i work a 9 to 5' versus 'i work for 3 hours at a job where i am present for 9 hours' the time allocated to any activity will never be wholly efficient simply because we are not going into a mentat flow state for a continuous 4 hours.
personally i rarely spend more than 15-30 minutes on an actual study unless i'm specifically studying rendering but i might do 10 of those spread out across the day. that or 5-6 speed paintings can be done on what i would consider to be a fairly leisurely schedule with no risk of burnout.

>Practice with your fingers and you need all day. Practice with your mind and you will do as much in 1 1/2 hours.
i would generally agree with this but when you got gud many years ago it is very easy to forget how much practicing with your fingers actually matters for beginners specifically. you can see this right away if you try drawing with you non-dominant hand, your knowledge is the same but the ability of your body to execute what your mind wants is underdeveloped.
with the perlman video i do think the fact that he is talking about violin specifically matters a lot. holding a pen is far less physically taxing and the required dexterity is pretty low, even more so if you work w/o pressure sensitivity. with a brush pen my hands would probably max out after 3 hours, on a wacom i can draw pretty much indefinitely without getting tired
in general i think the biggest problem most anons have is not drawing at all or not drawing consistently, this is why just draw became such a meme in the first place. it's hard to say whether it is more helpful to give a high number and expect them to whittle it down to something more efficient or to go with the lower number and hope they have the discipline to maximize it's usefulness.

>>6445806
how do you spend >6 hours a day playing an instrument and still enjoy doing it

>>6446209
Same way you do with drawing -> play music you like, and write/play your own music. There is no other way unless you’re autistic and find joy in the process of learning.

>>6446209
there's a reason i stopped lol. i had recitals where my lower lip* would be completely raw from sucking off woodwinds for so many hours.
>how do you spend >6 hours a day
be a kid
be competitive
get to do something besides school
have a massive crush on your band teacher
that kind of shit was basically the closest a weird autistic nerd could get to playing an away game
there were a lot of hot band girls too like weird hot which is even better

>>6446068
>it's hard to say whether it is more helpful to give a high number and expect them to whittle it down to something more efficient or to go with the lower number and hope they have the discipline to maximize it's usefulness.
Lel, I actually removed a paragraph from my previous post where I was talking about "dentists recommend you brush your teeth 5 times a day in the hopes that you'll at least brush it daily", so we're definitely on the same page.

I am very experienced on tablets and wouldn't be able to draw very well with my non-dominant hand, but on paper, where I suck even with the dominant one, all it took were 3 days of 30 minute, mindful practice for my non-dominant hand to be as good (or as bad) as my dominant one, and sometimes even better because my strokes were more mindful out of not being used to draw with it.

>>6446209
have an abusive parent living their dreams through u. See michael jackson, mozart etc...

>>6443214
I'm a junior at Riot, please don't doxx my IP, I'm surrounded by normie liberals