For people with F/T jobs, when do you find the time to draw?

[bouncyegg]

I have a full-time job that's not drawing (unfortunately), and find myself pretty tired after coming home from commuting and sometimes going to the gym...etc etc. I was wondering if anyone else felt this way and how do you find the time to sit down and draw?

http://tapastic.com/series/thebouncyegg

[camillabluejay]

I understand. It's exhausting : ( I work a lot of overtime at work too, so most of my life is work. I do come home tired. I think the trick is, is just to remind yourself how much it means to you. Spending my time making something just for myself makes me feel better after spending so much of my life doing things for a corporation. If I come home and just watch TV, I just feel like I wasted my precious time that's only for me.
The part that I struggle with, is the idea of 'competing' with other artists. I can only get a page finished every two weeks, and that's very frustrating to me, when I know other people are updating 2, 3 times a week. I wish I had more time than I do. : ( But I am getting things done, slow and steady. And if some of the pages arn't very good because I drew them tired, that's better than if they didn't exist at all. I believe in you, @bouncyegg. <3

[bouncyegg]

Thank you, good advice! I often also feel as though I have to compete with other artists who are lucky enough to release material quickly.

[Dingbat1991]

Back when I was interning (full-time I'll add) which was around the beginning of when I was making my comic, I was able to work on it during breaks, but since I'm in the design career by default, I have easy access to the necessary programs. I don't know how that would work out for everyone else.

Even so, I usually put aside 2 hours to my comic each night, from 8 to 10 pm, even with the internship. It's best to do little segments of it each night than to procrastinate.

[azureXtwilight]

I'm a full-time doctor, and I dedicate 75 percent of my hours at the hospital. The reason why I post comics on weekends is because that's the only time I can work on them.

[zerofruits]

Oh I can so relate to your post I always feel like I can never compete with people who update more frequently and I'm afraid that my subscribers (or potential ones) don't want to wait so long for updates (even though 2 weeks isn't that long right?) - I'm glad I'm not the only one feeling like this...

I work full time too, and at the end of the day after doing all your chores and stuff, all I have is about 2 hours (or 3-4 hours if I want to be super tired the next morning) to draw.

And yeah, it can be hard to find time and motivation to draw. But when you do, you can be even more proud of yourself for doing something productive at the end of the day. Plus, drawing is a huge stress reliever for me, especially when I can work on my webcomic. And even if it's slow progress, it's still progress!

[camillabluejay]

I AM FEELING SO CLOSE TO ALL OF YOU RIGHT NOW. ;_; hahahaha.
I work in animation- the hours are INSANE (Though maybe not as bad as yours, @azureXtwilight : O You're a beautiful person, taking care of so many people, and then coming home to work on your own projects)
And it's like @Dingbat1991 said, two hours a night builds up. I come home, shower, bring a cup of tea to my desk, and work until bedtime. We can do it, guys <3

[azureXtwilight]

Thanks for appreciating that! As a thank you I'm gonna sub you @camillabluejay

[camillabluejay]

I subbed you too! The colors look so pretty, I'll start reading it next week <3

[Dozzer]

Lol, I just asked myself this about this just last night as I drove home from a late shift. Full-time work has forced me to mold and shape my series' style into a simpler form that allows for quicker (but not necessarily quick) churning of content. To be fair, though, my series' story sorta revolves around my actual work (secret).

You see a bunch of awesome creators on this site, with great content that, no matter how good they are, looks like it would still take days. It's a little intimidating, but everyone on this site has offered the same advice for building an audience. Be consistent. =D

[KSlinger]

There's no secrect to it, really! I'm pretty knackered after work too (standard 8-5:30 job in marketing/managing) but I want to draw more than I want to relax, you know? I don't have a TV so that eliminates the temptation to just sit down and veg out. Most I'll do is have a bath or take my time cooking food. And you deserve a break, too, don't forget! Don't feel bad if you take an hour or two for yourself each day, you've earned that at the very least. Be kind to yourself.

It is like having two jobs though, and if you're in a relationship or have family obligations you can lose a lot of time to your responsibilities. Luckily I live alone so disturbances are minimal and usually pet orientated. Bottom line is that drawing is all I want to be doing so I'll do it come hell or high water.

[muixdiary]

I work as an admin during daytime. A 9-6 job. Sometimes i wish i can bring over my drawing tablet to work so i can draw during free time..
But my office is open space concept and i don't like colleagues to know so much about me...

usually i will draw when i got home, but yeah, because I don't get paid for it, sometimes i will lost my motivation to do it and tend to procrastinate... ;( But still, i think this "job" teaches me about self-discipline =D

i really wish one day i can quit my ft job and work as a comic creator. That would be perfect.

[gruetzi]

Sleep is for the weak! well, not really, but some kind of. I draw for 9:30 to 12:00 pm, Is the only free time I have.
Is super exhausting, and some times I´m delayed in the submissions. But I´m always happy to read the comments of my readers, so this keep me going on

[gruetzi]

I feel the same, I´m always thinking something like "oh I wish so hard to get more free time"

[PotooGryphon]

Basically, any time I'm not at work I'm at home working on comics. Even on my lunch break i do some online promoting or something comics related. Do i get tired? Yep, i take about a 10-15 minute nap and get back to it. It's what I'm currently dedicated/addicted too. X3

[carloswebcomic]

You just have to be disciplined about it.
I use my lunch time to sketch pages while I munch on a meat pie. While on my hour tip home, I think up of new scripts, and when I get home, after doing my homely duties, I use my last 2-3 hours left to ink and colour the pages.

Mind you, I don't know how many pages you churn out, but my limit is one per week.

[agentfink]

I was waking up at 4am for a while, to put in some time before having to go to work.
But when my freelance kicks in (which I do at night typically) it throws off my schedule.
I hope to get back to my 4am routine soon.

[iddqd]

Aw man, that's the worst... I find myself way too exhausted to do any real work on weeknights. Or to do anything else, really, even playing videogames is no longer fun. I get a lion's share of work done on Friday nights at the weekly Drink and Draw sessions. I hang out with cool people, relax, have a few brews, and squeeze about 4 hours of work out of me. Plus, there's the weekends.

[demthorshie]

I'm a full time Children's Book Illustrator and let me just say, I think I get way less sleep than I should as a result of working on my comic on the side. I set my work hours every day from 11am to around 7pm and dedicate all of my time after that to working on comic pages. I tend to stay up late and in to the morning everyday and i'm lucky if I can get away with 4-5 hours of sleep everyday. I do all of my work from home so this kind of makes the comic drawing a lot easier to squeeze in to my daily schedule. xD

[Shanny8]

I work FT Mon- Fri...sometimes I might have lulls at work in which I can get some stuff done, and if the flow is good, it usually spills over into the night after I make it home and I'll do more art then. Then there are other times where like a lot of you, I'm pooped and I cant get motivated to get any work done(I'm in one of those zones currently- though I'm trying to fight through it ans get stuff done with developing my webcomic). I try to get stuff done on the weekends after I had a sufficient night's sleep(usually LONGER than my weekday nights of sleep).