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How long does it take you to finish a piece of art?

I am very impatient so usually 1-3 hours, if not shorter for a "napkin in a diner" type of sketch. I usually call it finished whenever I get bored of adding details, but when I have finished the main focus of the picture. I made this one yesterday and it took about 3 hours
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I also draw on a very inconsistent schedule, so I still feel new to drawing despite having some drawings from 2 years ago
 
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Bantigon said:
I am very impatient so usually 1-3 hours, if not shorter for a "napkin in a diner" type of sketch. I usually call it finished whenever I get bored of adding details, but when I have finished the main focus of the picture. I made this one yesterday and it took about 3 hours
View attachment 244767
I also draw on a very inconsistent schedule, so I still feel new to drawing despite having some drawings from 2 years ago
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Is this...a Blastoise attempting to recite poetry from my prompt yesterday? XD either way, thank you for blessing my eyes with this



staticmoth said:
60-70 hours over weeks.
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That is pretty amazing
 
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Well obviously something simple doesn't take much time but apparently my fully colored ones that have at least some complexity or background tend to take 6-10 hours (or so says Procreate). I think the longest I've ever taken to draw something was around 20 hours? Kinda hard to track irl but it's probably around the same (of course it's not all in one sitting, but usually I try to draw for whatever free hours I have for several days in a row to not lose interest).
 
like everyone else here is saying it really depends on the complexity of the piece for me, it can range anywhere from about an hour to complete a simple full body to 3+ hours if i decide to torture myself by adding something like shading hahaha.
 
NumberOneSpinelApologist said:
That is pretty amazing
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ngl i forgot that procreate tracks time one more reason why its so reminisence of oekaki apps 2 me

turns out 60-70 is a bit of an outlier ;o; but this zine piece i made last year clocks in at 74 1/2 hours

IMG_8436.webp


but most are... between 20-30 hours lol. rly depends on what kind of workflow im using (re procreate -> csp -> procreate doesn't track regularly LOL)
 
Depends on the piece, it's something between 2 or 5 hours? (For anyone using Krita, you can check the time you've spent editing a document too! It's under File > Document Information) My drawings aren't very complex so I'd say it's okay. The only outlier I could find from this year clocks at around 12 hours lol And also the collab piece I did with Disc, that one says 10 hours.
time1.webp
time2.webp
time3.webp

71 hours..... I guess I could add all my documents up to know my total drawing time :P
Krita also tells you the number of times you've entered the document, but I'm pretty sure it's not just when you edit it because 93 for the first one is crazy lol
 
most of the work and time goes to the sketching phase. it's usually finished as soon as I'm happy with the lineart, since I just use a normal mechanical pen for basically everything in my sketchbook. said sketches are only one character at a time, either a portrait, a bust, the whole body or my usual "stops at the thighs," so it's easily done in two hours or even just one. depends on whether I ace the sketching on the first try or struggle with it, really

sometimes I properly "ink" the lines with a deeper, well sharpened pencil. other times I only line the eyes; eyelashes are what I consider my "thing" (plus they really need a sharp point to get right)

for "complete" products, i.e. what I post here, this time I line with a black colored pencil, color everything in-between with the other colored pencils, and reline once more because the lineart's already faded by then; it's especially necessary if the color is dark enough that you have a hard time picking the black lines in there

I used to erase everything and reline in black for this (the lineart's grooved into the paper so I usually don't lose anything), but in the end I stopped doing that. less work and gives some charm. erasing would be necessary if I used colored lines though, black only works over the graphite because it's, well, black

if I wanted to do something more complicated than just one character, like the comics or scenes I've been thinking about, obviously the time needed skyrockets. but that would still be well under ten hours I think; from my experience with digital art, somehow it multiplies all the time needed by at least three to five, unless I'm just that incompetent with drawing software and it's just me?

honestly it helps that I (usually) operate on "close enough is good enough"
 
from a quick glance through some of my biggest recent finished artworks, it seems to pretty consistently be around 3-4 hours, although in practice that's spread out over several days or weeks. sketching and rendering usually takes the longest, but since i typically sketch in my sketchbook file and only transfer to a separate file when i'm ready to start linework, that isn't reflected in the editing time so it could actually be around 4-5 hours.
for smaller pieces without backgrounds and full rendering and whatnot i'd put it in the ballpark of 2-3 hours, but that's a very rough guess d:

(if anyone is curious, my sketchbook file for this year is up to 103 hours. i spend way too much time on unfinished things lmao)
 
No idea. I might rarely draw backgrounds, but I'm used to a manual workflow. Hand drawn without a ruler and compass, even pixel-by-pixel.

Ideas too obvious I tend to put off. (despite writing a story with "rocket" in the title, the trio has yet to be depicted...)
 
Dubious Disc said:
my sketchbook file for this year is up to 103 hours.
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Nice :D that is a lot of drawing practice!
escolopendror said:
under File > Document Information
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TIL. I had no idea I can check it inside Krita ty


theclaw said:
Hand drawn without a ruler and compass
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Yeah I try to draw everything without much assistance from the program itself (other than some copypastinf for repetitive patterns etc) in hope it will make me improve more LOL. Not sure if it is working out for me xD

CrinkTheBunny said:
I'm quite a perfectionist so the lineart probably takes the longest time
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So that is the secret to your clean lines! :bulbaLove:

BTW for me, one clean shaded fullbody of one character with a decent background takes me approximately a work day
 
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