Art Schedules

[Anonymous No.3516510]

I'm wondering how many people here practise art by following some sort of schedule like pic related. Also, are art schedules something considered benificial to getting better or just some sort of meme?

I have been trying to come up with a schedule myself in order to be more focused on my journey to getting better. My goal is to get into animation so I've been trying to tailor my schedule to that. However I am having trouble with finding a balance that really incorporates every aspect into it, from fundamentals to actual animation practise to personal work from imagination. Am I overthinking this whole schedule thing or am I on the right track with wanting to do something like it?

[Anonymous No.3516512]

Setting some sort of schedule to establish a habit is good for you if you want to take art seriously. But autistically scheduling every hour of every day seems excessive.

[Anonymous No.3516515]

>>3516510
I don't know the whole story, but I'm pretty sure the guy who made this schedule gave up on it after a week.
As for your actual question you should learn to enjoy the process of getting better and learning. I was a lazy fuck and barely did an hour a day when I first started. When I noticed how much I was improving, I naturally started putting more effort in, since I realised how much more I still don't know. Eventually I made more progress in one year than I did in all the years before.

Try and aim for 2+ hours of decent practice a day. Split it up into chunks throughout the day if you've got ADD and think it would help.

Also get yourself banned from 4chan so you don't waste more time shitposting here.

[Anonymous No.3516526]

>>3516515
>I don't know the whole story, but I'm pretty sure the guy who made this schedule gave up on it after a week.
It's a schedule of Dave Rapoza.

[Anonymous No.3516535]

I do the reverse schedule. I plan all my leisure time in my weekly schedule but none of my work time. This creates a reverse psychology effect where your leisure time feels like work and you want to do something else like art instead but I force myself trough the leisure time anyway and after it I am more than willing to work.

[Anonymous No.3516538]

>>3516515
That's Dave Rapoza's schedule...

[Anonymous No.3516543]

>>3516538
Forgot the name of him for that post but who gives a fuck anyway anon?

[Anonymous No.3516545]

Start by tracking what you do every hour of the day for two weeks, don't try to be extra productive or anything, just do what you naturally do.

Now take this log and look for areas where you're naturally productive and increase that time, it'll be easy to do because you already work hard during this time, what's another hour?

Find areas where you're really unproductive, maybe you watch tv for 3 hours everyday or something, we all do it. Cut into that and replace and hour of that with and hour of nothing. Not something productive, just nothing, listen to some slow paced music, you don't need to meditate, this is just to slow you down,
The reason we behave unproductively is because we're going too fast for our willpower to catch up. Slow your mind down and you'll be able to think through things better


Very slowly over time you need to change our day to day life, you can't go from doing nothing all day to drawing 8 hours a day, you will burn out, there's no if's about it, You. Will. Burn. Out

Be realistic and do what will ACTUALLY lead to your goals

[Anonymous No.3516549]

>>3516510
What I am planning to do is bookend my days with drawing/study.

First thing when I wake up I'm drawing for myself/working on projects. Then, around evening time I devote some time to study.

Want to take advantage of how we consolidate memories during sleep, then immediately apply the knowledge for better retention in the early morning where I have unbroken amounts of time to work.

Writing up a curriculum now.

>>3516545
This seems useful too.

[Anonymous No.3516550]

>>3516510
>>3516538
That's a professional artists schedule. You aren't a professional artist, are you? What makes you think you can keep up with their schedule then? You don't ACTUALLY think that following their schedule would make you as good as them, do you? Retard?

The only schedule you need to follow is to JUST DRAW, EVERY DAY.
Something. Anything. Half a page, or half a sketchbook - for as long as each takes. The time you spend writing up a schedule is time that should've been spent drawing, you fucking idiot. The time I spent writing this out should've been spent drawing, you fucking crab. HEY, YOU, READING THIS, WHY THE FUCK AREN'T YOU DRAWING?

JUST. FUCKING. DRAW.

[Anonymous No.3516553]

>>3516545
To add a little bit more...

This scheduling method is by far the most effective I've found
It's totally focussed on tackling the habits you currently have and gradually working on them.


The bit about cutting into unproductive areas: you're not replacing it with productive activity, that's not the point. The idea is just to stop, fullstop, take yourself away from things occupying your mind. You need to get yourself into a position where your own thoughts are in the forefront of your mind, and not the flashing colours of a youtube video.

Sit there/go for a walk/listen to some non-distracting music and spend an hour processing all the chaotic thoughts you have. Just think casually, whatever comes to your mind, get through the thoughts.

After about an hour you'll have reached a point where you've gone through all your thoughts and you'll get an urge to do something. You'll remember your aspirations and your ideas and now you will be much calmer and you will actually feel like doing something productive. And then when you do, you'll be happier, it won't feel like work

[Anonymous No.3516559]

And minor accessory type scheduling things that you should add if you feel you can without being stressfull


Wake up in the morning and go to bed at night, your body doesn't function well when you wake up at 9pm, you'll have no energy

Eat healthy, exercise, drink water, etc - these things are all about energy too. Healthy body, healthy mind

When drawing for long hours, use the pomodoro method: 25 minutes of drawing and then 5 minutes break, and repeat.
This video explains why this method works
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlU-zDU6aQ0

[Anonymous No.3516569]

Mine's been like this for the past month:
8am-4pm work
4-5pm warm up
5-6pm break
6-7pm daily studies (hands,feet, figure, value)
8-2am personal works (mostly drawthread requests)

[Anonymous No.3516570]

>>3516550
Eternally NGMI

[Anonymous No.3516576]

The number one thing you need to remember is your goal

Your goal isn't to draw for 8 hours a day, your goal is to make progress and draw some nice art
Tehmeh didn't draw for 8 hours a day (rumours say he only drew for 2 hours a day and played csgo for the rest of the day... I never followed his posts much)

If you somehow manage to draw for 8 hours a day but all 8 of those hours are spent drawing poorly made circles because you burnt out 2 days ago, you're wasting your time!


The mindset that you need in your life needs to be one of absolute seriousness
A good way to get into this mindset is to think of back when you were in school and you had a big essay due the next day.
When you first got the essay and you had two weeks to do it, you probably sat down and started planning out what to write, thinking what font to go with, what books would be best.. do the authors have any unique insights into the topic that I can add in despite it not being a requirement.
This is procrastination
As the days go by you waste more and more time and finally you reach the final day before the deadline and that's when it hits you
"this is bullshit, that is bullshit, that's not required..." now you start thinking seriously, because you need to get it done and fast.
You're on a straight path and you know exactly what you need to do
The truth is... you knew exactly what you needed to do the entire time, you just ignored it

/continued

[Anonymous No.3516578]

>>3516576
cont/
Think how you felt at that time, that frame of mind... you turn off your phone because it's distracting, you don't care about the font anymore, etc. All these things aren't important, you're on the most effective route possible to getting your work done

That's what you need to be like for your entire life, get serious, realize that the idea of drawing 8 hours a day is pointless romantacism and you WILL burn out if you do that. Know that realistically you can actually make progress if you sit your ass down and arrange your schedule in a way that allows you study as much and as effectively as possible in a way that will actually work. And that is exactly what you need to do.

[Anonymous No.3516584]

>>3516578
Here's an actual example

Lets say you want to learn some anatomy because your anatomy skills are weak
With all the time on your hands you think: "I'm gonna read through this massive anatomy book and read what the introduction says and all that, that'll give me a real deep understanding of everything"
no, that's a waste of time at your level (I'm assuming you're at that level, it's the average level of an /ic/ user)
Skip to the drawing of the muscles and copy them, and then go to google and look for more reference of that muscle group from different angles and study them

This is a more serious approach, you can do that in about 10 minutes, don't waste time making your sketches look neat and tidy, just make sure you know what you're drawing

If you faf around reading the biography of george bridgman you're not learning anything, your wasting time.
You know deep down inside your mind exactly what you need to do, tap into those thoughts and cut the bullshit

[Anonymous No.3516590]

>>3516515
>>3516545
>>3516576

OP here, thanks for the valuable insights. I've been having the beginning symptoms of what I guess is an art block, feeling like I'm getting nowhere, more critical of my art than usual etc. I guess that train of thought made something like working on a schedule very tempting and I've probably tried to bite off more than I can chew. Really needed this wake up call before I went and burned myself out completely.

[Anonymous No.3516592]

>>3516590
Sometimes you have bad days anon, recently I went through a kind of block also; nothing I did came out right and I could not draw a stick figure from imagination. I just forced myself through my studies and went to bed, afraid I'd burned myself out; the next day that feeling was gone and I was full of ideas and motivation again, just endure it™.

[Anonymous No.3516608]

>>3516590
I sucked shit for a long time, still think I do. But hey, I'm better than I was yesterday.
Working to improve every day is the best mindset to adopt.

[Anonymous No.3516615]

>>3516590
This is kind of unrelated but I want to say it just to get the information out there

Art block doesn't exist
This graph that we've all seen.. it's all wrong
It doesn't work like this at all

The way you feel about your skills - days when you can draw like a god vs days when you can't draw a straight line.. They have nothing to do with your skills or progression
They are related to how your day is going outside of art - your frame of mind

If you have a big argument with your family and lose your wallet on the same day, you will draw like shit that day, because you are stressed. That stress cripples your art. Art is an intensive activity, your mind must be clear and focussed.

I've lost my graph that I made but what I did was I kept a log of how I felt during the day each day and then also a log of how I felt my art skills were that day when I drew, on a scale of 1 to 10
I can't say much for art improvement but I can say that, that graph was a total clusterfuck. There was no neat up and down pattern that I was expecting
And my art skills were strikingly simillar to how I felt during the day in general.

This led me to realize that your art skills are dependent on your frame of mind of that day
I encourage you to replicate this study yourself (because while I'm confident in my own case, I can't really say it's true for certain)

This ties back into my earlier point about "healthy body, healthy mind"
Stress and depression = bad art and no progression
Watch Sinix's sketchbook videos, during his years of depression you can see how weak his art becomes and he makes no progress whatsoever for like 5 years

[Anonymous No.3516646]

>>3516615
Fuck off self help book faggot. You will never make it.

[Anonymous No.3516893]

my schedule is
>12pm-5pm just draw
it works every time

[Anonymous No.3516907]

>>3516646
Chill out

[Anonymous No.3516923]

>>3516538
Yes, and Dave Rapoza could not stick to the schedule he created.

[Anonymous No.3516931]

>>3516515
This anon gets it.
Learning something new is more like a marathon than a sprint. You learn hell of alot more if you spread learning in bite size pieces rather than just gulp it in one sitting. Your brain cant solidify that knowledge without some rest time in between.

I tried to do an experiment this year and decided to learn ukrainian as my third language this year, so starting from new year i practiced reading and speaking for just 10-15 minutes every day, of intense learning. So far its been 6 months and i managed to keep a steady streak (though i think i missed 2 or 3 days) but now I can easily read in cyrillic and hold basic sentences. I mean I dont talk flawlessly and i sometimes dont certain words, but considering that i am doing for only half a year id say im doing decent. And that is only 15 min every day.

All you have to do is make a goal easy enough so that you can easily finish it every day. Just making sure that you open your sketchbook and drawing 1 line is good enough. By that time you will probably draw another since you got everything already set up. And with that you gradually increase work time little by little every week, and slowly you'll get up to the higher tiers.

[Anonymous No.3516967]

How can I get over the investment I have to working 8 hours a day or more on art.

I understand intellectually it's easier and better to just put for consistent effort over time instead of cramming like it's a test. Somehow or other though I have become emotionally attached to "making it" through long 12 hour sessions.

[Anonymous No.3517096]

The last time I kept a schedule I burned out so bad I almost killed myself. It wasn't a particularly unreasonable schedule either.

[Anonymous No.3517115]

>>3516538
If you showed that to him now he'd be like
>get that shit out of my face lmao
He's changed a lot in his opinions about art and work since that schedule image from years ago.

On streams he's talked about how to be more efficient in studying that's less about grinding and more about supporting what you actually want to do. It's similar to the Howard Pyle method
>sketch out an image you want to make from imagination
>take the drawing as far as you can on your own
>find relevant references to do studies of
>incorporate what you learned into the piece while rendering it out and use reference to fix anything that looks off

I mean no one's going to get there in the maximum efficient way possible, and some grinding of fundamentals that's useful to everything (like the human figure or master studies) is inevitable. But when you draw a study and you know you could do better, don't just leave it at that and move onto another study, do another iteration and try to fix it in order to learn.

[Anonymous No.3517171]

>>3516967
If we could actually consistently manipulate our emotions and how we feel about things no human would ever suffer again and have a happy life.

I hate my job that I do for 3 years now. I went hundreds of times to my job and tried everything to make it better, be it physically or mentally but I still hate it and I still suffer every single day. Sometimes when I try something new I may have an easier time for 2-3 days but then it's back to suffering.

I honestly believe true change isn't possible.

[Anonymous No.3517961]

>>3516576
>>3516578
>>3516584
hey good fucking shit man, very helpful.

>>3517115
also great post. this is why I used to love /ic/

[Anonymous No.3517973]

4 hours per day with lecture time on the weekend to improve technique seems reasonable for the working man. There are a lot of NEETs on this board who claim they draw 8 hours per day but I doubt it.

[Anonymous No.3517980]

>>3517973
It's impossible to study 8h/day, but a reasonable time for drawing, especially rendering, it's very time consuming

[Anonymous No.3518064]

>>3516646
hello? are you ok?