Artists who were REALLY slow in the beginning - what helped you get better?

[CMYKat]

I am super-guilty of being extremely slow and I feel awful about it. I have a schedule I'm working with, and in the end, I want to tell this little story for my own sake, but I feel awful getting folks invested in it and then making them wait for long periods between updates.

My excuses are simple and not uncommon. I have a high workload, ADHD and learning difficulties that make producing regular personal art very challenging. I'm terrible at managing my time and I'm slow while I work on pages.

What helped you get better? I'm braaand new at this, so in your experience, does it get easier as you go? Was there something that made you more accountable, like a sudden spike in subs? Or did it just kind of happen?

Just looking for some encouragement akin to "It CAN get better". I know it all comes down to me in the end, but I'm feeling a bit discouraged with myself lately.

Thanks!

[Van]

I simply learned my limits and found a way that's most comfortable for me to draw with, I recently changed it a bit to challenge myself more and I'm happy with the change

originally it took me 3 hours to finish a drawing that was pretty low quality and amateur level, I had a really difficult time with lineart drawing because I can't hold a pen steadily to save my goddamn life, especially with anatomy lining, so I simply gave up and drew with the line tool. It actually worked pretty neat, things became much easier and much faster to draw and my hands hurted less

eventually I got better and better and realized I've gotten pretty decent at anatomy, so I attempted line art again but this time with a messy pencil brush and turns out it's actually really fun and I've gotten way faster at lineart

It simply just takes time and practice, you gotta build up your stamina n get into a style that's the best for ya

[rajillustration]

It was Gesture drawing and learning techniques that work in broad strokes so I'm not wasting my time drawing every tile on the floor or something. I also had this class where I had to make 4 portraits a week. That was brutal. Also, having a deadline really does help let go of imperfections just so you can have something done. Going into my art program I spent 15 hours per painting. Coming out of it 2 years later I spent 4 hours per painting. You learn how to go really fast because in the real world having something done is so much more important than having something groundbreaking. You learn to stylize because you need something that is quicker and cheaper to produce.

But overall, I would not be too worried because you'll naturally get faster as you learn how your brushes work and what your hotkeys are (especially if you're new to the digital medium). Also, as you define your style, those styles will generally help your speed because then you'll have a pipeline that you can make more efficient. (like my first comic page I made out of college--took me an entire week to make. It was one page, black and white, made with sharpies. If you're new to a concept or a medium--allow it to take time.)

And also, your schedule is your own. I think we compare ourselves to eachother a lot, but as far as the time it takes to create something--that's all your own. It can be as long as you need. I wait like 6 months for a Lackadaisy update, you can spend longer on your own comics, too.

[LCT_m_a_d]

Drawing slow isn't necessarily a bad thing.
What you can do is plan your panels to include more content, details, and presentation. You may not have as many frequent updates but your audience will appreciate the quality.

[starless]

There is a South Korean webcomic artist who has ADHD and some other mental health issues. Her name is BoneBloodFlesh and nowadays her work is very popular, but it's known that she struggled to keep it up for a long time due to her illness.

She knew that she couldn't work like others so she chose steady efforts instead. She made free comics more than two years in the past and to be honest, she didn't earn much money from it. Though she made a progress no matter how small it was and eventually her work was noticed and became one of Korean Webtoon original series.

If you can't make a page per day, it's ok. You can make a page per week and those weeks will mean something.

I don't think there's an Eng traslation but here's the link of her work.

합법해적 파르페

[CMYKat]

Wow, thanks so much for sharing your experiences and advice, this relieved a bit of stress. I'd give anything to somehow have the storytelling talent to keep someone's attention for so long between updates haha. I'd be happier with a good medium. c:

[CMYKat]

Thanks, I'm glad to hear you suggest this. It's sort of what I'm doing now. Hoepfully as I keep practicing the quality will get better and better. c:

[crowstories]

I also have trouble holding a pen steady, and I've recently found that if I do the main, outer outline with a much thicker line, it's way easier to control for some reason, and ends up looking like more of a style than my thinner, wavery lines. Then you can use a smaller brush to do the inner details. Don't know if this will apply to you, but might be worth a shot!

[Aleksei]

Well, for me, it took me years to have the courage to submitt something due to the same confidence problems. I just thought that 'I ain't good enough yet to present something'. Then, someday I just thought to myself 'when will I be good enough?'. That is a tricky question, because been 'good enough' its not a goal, its a road. Everyday you became better at what you do, just by doing it. Much of the practice that you get by doing a chapter, or even a vignette makes you better than you were before, so, I answered myself with a 'the hell with this. I never gonna become better if I don't start doing something', so I just made the goal, that is making a nice comic, into the way to that same goal. I will do a comic, until I am able to do a comic.

Some things that I learned on while on this. Be creative to solve your problems, don't let them be a wall for you if you don't want to stop. If you think that you can't draw because you don't have the last wacom tablet, try to take a curve. Draw in paper, and take a picture and fix it with photoshop. Don't know body proportions? There are free posable dummies in the internet! (or buy a cheap barbie?) Can't find the right pose of a chair? There are free 3D designs on the net, also. You can print the screen, put it on Paint for later use it as reference.

Try everything you can, and if you hit a wall you can't overcome. Then just rest. Its not bad to take your time neither. You need to absorb all at your own time. There is not secret recipe for art, so take what you need of what I and other peoples said, and what you don't need, just leave it aside. Have some tea, good luck, and enjoy your travel.

[noenoh]

woah Thanks for posting this korean artist experience. Because sometimes its not only skills leveling up what makes you faster or slower, but there are a lot of factors some of us struggle with trying to keep up but life happens.

[kitschensyngk]

Set yourself an update schedule and stick to it.

I was slow to make comic pages when I started out and was only putting a new page on my website every few weeks until I made myself a two-updates-a-week schedule. Having a deadline improved my efficiency tremendously, and I got so good at it that I later switched to three updates a week. And on occasions where I can't finish a page on time, I upload a finished panel or a piece of comic art to share with readers.

[Kaydreamer]

I do the following, which really helps me with getting comic updates out on time:

I have a routine for my 'art days' which I try to stick to like glue. (Routine REALLY helps my ADHD.) I don't try to draw much in the mornings, it seems to be a creative dead zone for me, so I'll do promo and social media instead. Around 1pm I'll start actually working on pages, and I'll keep going until my focus wanes.

• Monday: Sketch and panel layout day.
• Tuesday: Lineart and flats day.
• Wednesday: Painting day! (My favourite!)
• Thursday and Friday I teach, so no drawing on those days. I'm usually too tired.

I finish about two pages a week this way. I want to try and increase that - my Monday is pretty unproductive, because I'm trying to haul my brain out of weekend mode. But for now, that pace works well for me, and I'm getting stuff done. (And TBH, I kinda make up for Monday with my Tuesday and Wednesday, because I just DO NOT STOP working on colours until my partner drags me down to dinner.)

Beyond that, here are some other things I do which are helpful.

• I have a target for how many 'pages' go in each vertical episode. (Between 3 to 4, depending on where the best place to stop is.)
• I have an update schedule I stick to religiously. This means I HAVE to have an episode finished every two weeks. My brain loves deadlines. My heart does not, but my brain does.
• On the weekends, if I get a spare moment and I feel the urge to draw, I'll lay out rough key sketches for future pages, or use my pose app to create character poses for upcoming scenes, which speeds up the drawing process on Mondays.

ADHD is a hell of a thing to have when you're working from home on a passion project. I try to go with my own flow, to make it as easy on myself as possible. That means sketching and writing at weird hours, not trying to draw in the mornings, and letting hyperfocus carry me as long as it likes on the days where it graces me with its presence.

[carloswebcomic]

I have ADHD, work and have to adult on a daily basis.
Unfortunately, it does not get easier. Not by itself, anyway.

It depends on what you want to do. Do you want to update once a month?
Do you care if people read your comic or not?
Is making a comic just a diversion or is this something you really want to do?

I never found making comics easy, but learning what your capabilities are, and planning around it, makes it somewhat manageable.

[darthmongoose]

The thing about being an ND artist, in my case Autistic rather than ADHD, is that you have to come up with a way of doing things that works for you. Sometimes that way of doing things will be pretty wacky compared to how a neurotypical creator would work, but that's okay. It's all about results!

In my case, I am either a drawing dynamo or I'm chipping away at a thing with agonisingly low speed. There's no in-between. So the important thing is trying to make it as easy as possible to get into what I always called "The zone" before knowing I was autistic and now recognise as "hyper-focus", staying in the zone for a healthy period of time (ie. with drawing it's unhealthy not to take breaks every hour or two) and getting as much done as possible while in that zone.
So my strategy is:
1. Put aside time to draw that is ONLY for drawing. Nothing else.
2. Make sure you are in an environment that is as comfortable as possible. If the light bothers you or there's background noise or distracting movement in your peripheral vision, that's a problem. If your chair isn't the right height, or the monitor is too bright or people are talking... these are all things an NT person might tune out, and you might have trained yourself not to complain about them, but your brain IS noticing, it's like having extra tabs open slowing down your computer. Remove all unnecessary cognitive load and stimulus.
3. Music without lyrics. Make yourself a playlist. You can use stuff with speech or lyrics if you're under-stimulated (me when inking and colouring) and then have stuff without lyrics for when you're overstimulated or doing the stuff that needs a lot of concentration. When I'm really badly overstimulated and struggling with noise (because I live in a shared house), I put on rain or wave sounds.

So you have your drawing time in a comfortable environment. The other secret ingredient is to make sure your drawing style balances looking decent and clearly telling the story with being viable in the amount of time you have to draw. A webcomic doesn't need to look like the roof of the Sistine chapel to be good or even to be popular. Just look at xkcd, Homestuck, Rubyquest, Lady of the Shard, Hark! A Vagrant! and the like. They all have pretty simple art. It can be easy to look at the Tapas premium comics, often produced by a team, and to judge your work in comparison to those, but even they use shortcuts like 3D models for backgrounds and props, and simple art with minimal shading. Try to find a pipeline that works for you. It doesn't need to look as good as an illustration; it just needs to look pretty nice and be easy to read.

[Puck]

I have similiar problems and I´m really slow too.
I was very fast when I was a kid, I filled a couple of pages every day with my brother.
Then I started relearning at the age of 40 and that really slowed me down, I couldn´t
even finish single panels anymore.
I had to find the midground between not caring how it looks and being fast and
caring too much and getting nothing done.
Some things helped me:
Setting a timer.
I started making cartoons, single panels and I set my timer to one hour. Sketch &
ink. This can take a while to get used to it. The hour is over and you are still refining
the sketch, so next time you try to be faster or draw with a simple style that you
can actually draw instead of trying to draw better than you can

Another thing that helped me was doing 24/12/6 hours comic days.
In the 24 hours comic day you have to draw a 24 pages comic in 24 hours.
It´s a challenge which worked for me, for many people these kind of challenges
don´t work. It helps with fighting the overthinking.

Many people draw too complicated and would be better off simplifying their
style, make it dynamic and get it done and then get better with time and practice.
Drawing time is not practice time, that´s too seperated things. You get better
by drawing but I would seperate it

[jcmraz]

Well.. I got faster and then I found new things to fill that time out. My workload has increased dramatically so I've had to make some concessions but in general , the faster I've gotten, the more work I've put in to making the pages better. So the speed at which I put out content has remained roughly stable. One thing that helped me mitigate my new workload, commute and life circumstances was getting an ipad pro and apple pencil. Now I do most of the artwork on procreate and just do the panelling and some finishing touches at home on CSP. If I didn't do that pages would probably be taking 2 months to finish each at this point.

[thirdly]

If you are unemployed and supported by family: Create a firm schedule for yourself. Get plenty of sleep and if you are feeling the art groove, work on more pages so that you can start "piling up." If you manage to get at least a month ahead on your uploads, the pressure eases and you can continue at the pace you want.

If you are employed and have limited hours: How much does art itself mean to you? How much does the PROJECT mean to you? If you have no drive to draw and no motivation for the project you're working on, you will find ALL the excuses in the world to NOT DO IT...to put it off and post sporadically.

Set goals for yourself! "I want to finish chapter 4 before summer." "I want to finish act 3 before 2022."

But, most importantly (and everyone hates hearing this) CUT CORNERS!! If you want to complete something and you DON'T have the passionate drive and time established artists do, you HAVE to sacrifice the quality. You do not want to spend a whole hour on a character's bangs (I have been guilty of this) when it would have been a better hour placed into sketching out 4 pages!

My Method of Madness:
1. Revise the story and script.
2. Sketch out thumbnails of how you want those scenes to turn out.
3. Use those thumbnails as rough guides in your actual pages (because who has the time to re-sketch it all when the thumbnail's right there, save some time and just use them.
4. Flesh out the thumbnail sketches (this is the time that if you need references for any specific movement the character is doing, go find it!).
5. If inking is what takes the longest for you, STOP HERE. Ink the next day. Otherwise, ink those scenes.
6. Color/finish up the NEXT day. If you break up your stages, it doesn't feel as burdensome. I know that as an artist you want to see THE FINISHED PRODUCT on the same day, but splitting up a couple of hours from one day to the next makes it so that your body LOVES you...you won't suffer carpal tunnel or arthritis as hard, You might even get more ideas about the backgrounds.

Remember that, unless you have other people helping you ink and color, you CAN'T expect yourself to crank out quality work consistently. Make it as BASIC and SIMPLE as you can at first, and once you've gotten a good rhythm going, THEN you can go back and add details to earlier chapters or toss a bit more flair into current ones. (Examples: The Kao is a well-established artist and sometimes he redraws older comics that he had originally posted in simple black and white!! And the author of YokaiDay began the whole series as chibis and gradually added full-fleshed scenes of gloriousness as they went along!)

Figure out what works best for you. But, ONLY if the project is that important to you.

[MK_Wizard]

I took people's criticism with a grain of salt and took the advice that helped me like cleaning it up so it doesn't look sketchy, doing speech bubbles digitally instead of by hand, adding proper shading and most importantly, adding backgrounds to the scenes.

[CMYKat]

That's a habit I DEFINITELY have to get into more, even if it's just a cute sketch or something.