I'm just curious what is the "normal" time frame to finish an art piece? I mean how much time do you need for a:
(Headshot / Bust up / Full body) lineart?
(Headshot / Bust up / Full body) colored version?
I want to improve and be faster, but I don't know what time is normal... 
Thank you for the answers in advance! 
Oct '18
Oct '18
There's no normal time frame I think. Everyone has their own tempo because of their art style, tools they use, motivation, patience and many other things. Trying to be faster is not a bad thing of course. 
Maybe you could try drawing within a time limit or something like that?
I take up to an hour with lineart, but coloring takes me much longer. Usually twice as much so around three hours total for one drawing? But I don't always finish my drawings in one sitting.
it depends on the artist and their skill level. The more detail you can put in, the more you likely will put in.
For me, my estimate is:
sketches for headshots are 20min, bust about 30min, and 40min full body. Double the time fore lines, and coloring takes about 30minutes for heads and busts, and 1.5-2 hours fr full body.
i dont do a lot of jus character illustrations, but for comics it typically takes me like, 8-10 hours to make 4-6 pages... so... 1.75 hours a page? (blimey)
I'm not sure I could answer this question, really. For example, are your colours flat, or cell shading, or quick digital painting, or really polished digital painting, or real media? Each of those takes wildly differing amounts of time. Is your lineart done digitally, or with microns, or with brush pen, or are you just doing really clean pencil lines?
How difficult is the pose of the character? How difficult to draw is the character? How many colours and details are in the character's outfit?
And beyond those specifics, even when it comes to the same character in the same pose with the same media, different people draw at different speeds, and do some parts of the process differently. I sketch with very clean lines very quickly, but as soon as I start inking and colouring I spend hours on a piece. I have friends who are speedy inkers or colourists, but would die trying to sketch as quickly as I do.
Sometimes drawing a single character waist-up with mostly clean lines and some basic colour happens easily in half an hour. Other times I find myself spending 2 hours just getting a pose right because this particular composition is a challenge. Sometimes I get really inspired to draw something complicated and blow through it in a single afternoon, when something much simpler that isn't coming easily to me takes days to get right. I don't know that there's an easy average, there.
For commissions, a waist-up takes me about 1.5 to 2 hours. And full body is 3 hours or more. Depends on the difficulty. I usuallly draw in a painterly style so there’s more time spent there. For comics, 7-8 hours per page is about the norm for me.
Most of the testimonials are relating the clear point that it's going to vary by project and your own strengths/weaknesses.
I would like to add another strange variable... your own individual quirks can affect it greatly too. Personally, I got a weird compulsion that gets me lost in the void when drawing wood grains. I will spend hours working on something that's probably only going to get a glance in the final product.
But at least it feels more like meditation than a mania to me.
Eventhough I get your point, I don't think there's a "normal" time frame for drawing something.
Like it was mentioned before it really depends on the style, pose and how you color. A painterly style vs a anime style colors (basically one local color and one shade color) wouldn't be the same in regards of the time spent doing it (eventhough you're working with the same character/pose in both cases).
Adding to what's previously said, also you got to take into consideration that if you're working for yourself you could spend as much time as you want with a piece, but if you're working for somebody else, well that's another story...
When you start working for others (and it involves money) you realise that each commission it's a challenge, each it's a puzzle that you need to solve. Some you may do it in days, some may take you weeks. So you need to find a balance between meeting deadlines and doing a good job, sometimes you need to learn to compromise certain aspects that you wish you could spend longer on it, but to get the job done you need to cut them. That's the hardest thing I think, finding that balance between speed and quality.
So, in the end, I would work on my skills first, speed will come with time, the more you draw something, the more you know something, the faster and the better you will draw it.
Its depend, I think. If I'm just sketching around without really caring about some crooked ones,I could go from less than 5 minutes to 30 minutes, and if the sketch is a lot more detailed and I see the lines cleanly, it could go up to 4 to 5 hours (I feel pained with my slow speed).
As for inking, that's also depends. If I were to inking on my phone, it ranged from 2 - 5 hours depending on the clean lines of my sketch.
And coloring might took an entire day for me to make depending on the detail of my coloring version.
Why am I so slow? ;w;
Comics it's shorter for me, about 5-7 hours on average and on my most detailed it can take a full days worth. Like the most detailed page I've made took me over 22 hours.
It always takes more time to do lineart for me, since i'm constantly and unconsciously learning while doing so, and when i'm not satisfied with the way it looks i'd mull over it for hours and think, coloring is relatively easier and efficient part of the process since i strive for traditional watercolor look but do it digitally, it allows me more freedom than lineart. I'm still learning and people have different speed and that's okay, take your time, don't rush and get impatient, but stay focus and pay attention while drawing for me is the best solution to improve. And take break every once in a while, away from it so when we return, we can spot mistake easily with a pair of fresh eyes.
Lineart usually takes longer than colouring for me because I become aware of all the mistakes I've made in my sketch lol. I think it will depend on the pose of the character too and if they look different from what you usually draw (f.x if you're good at drawing skinny boys but then have to draw a big muscle mountain). Drawings can take me all from 1-2 hours to 7 hours depending on pose, detail, type of character(s) etc, it's very hard to estimate.
Youtube speedpaints usually tell people how long they spent on a drawing but as everyone else said it pretty much varies from person to person.
I want to say at least 1-3 hours for a full body pic, with full colouring. But that depends on the software I decide to draw on and how motivated/tired I am 8(
I'm in the camp that hasn't done a lot of standalone character drawings since starting my comic, but... regarding comic pages, I can do the pencils in around an hour usually (~5 panels, can take wayyyy longer if it has a lot of detail or I get stuck on a pose lol), inks take... roughly the same, maybe 1-2 hours. And coloring takes the bulk majority of the time, flats can take like 1-3 hours, and shading usually eats up another 1-3. 2/3 or more of the time per page is easily the coloring xD
