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

[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).

[alaingrey]

I've found that working full time just causes me to be more efficient about how I choose to work. At my job I've learned how to get artwork done quickly, and now I just apply those same skills at home. My biggest time sink when I didn't have a job/was a beginner artist was I'd waste hours and hours by not starting with a plan. Now I always know what I'm making when I sit down to work by writing file sizes, and content lists with thumbnails made. It saves a ton of hours wasted by just sketching until something good comes up.

Also, I think like many people with office jobs I might also take work 'breaks' by sketching for my comics or paintings during down time : D

[ToonDoctor]

Weekends. They are wonderful but it means less of a social life!

[SirHellsir]

you're a doctor and you still find time and energy to draw, that's impressive

[saerel]

Does anyone here have a full time job AND children AND still manage to do a comic?

[gateofselidor]

I do most of my pencils during breaks and lunch at work. The digital side I have to save for evenings and weekends, which isn't easy. I can't really do things like staying up late to finish a page, because much as I love my comic, my job has to come first. Often I look at other creators who post multiple pages per week, rarely if ever missing an update, and I feel bad about my own comic, but I think most of them probably don't have a full-time job.

The worst thing about my job is that it prevents me from doing things like running a Patreon. I can't produce any more pages than I do already, and I don't have time to make bonus materials either, so I couldn't offer any good rewards or goals. I can't reduce my hours at work, and the amount I'd need to be making from the Patreon to replace my pay from work is much higher than most webcomic artists make (and it's not like I have a big salary or anything. I see Patreon campaigns that say things like "$1000 and I can make comics full time", but that would barely cover my rent, and I'm just a lodger, I don't even have my own place).

[demthorshie]

Good question. I want kids in the future and i've been wondering if there's anyone who is able to balance work/kids/comic and make it work some how.