hi anon!

i think it's just a fact of life as we move from adolescence into adulthood that we have less time for hobbies and personal enjoyment... but i think because of that, we should cherish our free time as much as we possibly can.

with that being said, back to the point - i love doing illustrations, i always have, but it's true i make less illustrations than i used to. i consider myself pretty slow at art and... i think i always was? back in elementary school i used to do maybe 1-2 big illusts per month, but the drawings on a whole weren't that complex. i cycled between submitting illusts between many, MANY doodles. i used to also draw a lot in my sketchbook/watercolour sketchbook + compile them to scan 1x per week, so there might be multiple uploads per day because of that. here's an example of my timeline on deviantart:

nowadays i have less time for personal art, but i still try to do a few illusts per year. con prep also requires illusts to be made too (depends on what kind of con artist you are, some people only make small merch and that's fine), so that also helps.

if i'm on a really tight deadline and i skip things like... movie nights, or opt for quick meals (and if i have the discipline i'll peel myself out of bed at 6:30 in the morning), i could do a drawing within a week or even a few days maybe, but i get really exhausted afterwards from hyper focusing so much of my mental energy on one drawing. i don't recommend it for anyone LMAO.
on average, 1 illust usually takes me 2.5-3 weeks, if i'm more casual about it.

even if i can't complete 1 illust per month like i used to, and if i feel rather down about it, i just gotta remind myself that my art has improved a lot over the years, and the work i make now is a lot more complex than the ones made ~10 years ago, and more complex art can take more time. i'm sure your art has improved a lot as you got older too!! on the other hand, if you can only make 1 drawing a year, that's okay too.

not to mention, as you grow older, your inspirations and influences likely grow and change as well - on a whole it takes me tons of time to research, gather inspirations, and draft each piece as well, much more than it used to.

here are some things that have personally helped me, and may help you:

• unlearn perfectionism (or maybe this is just a Me issue...)

• schedule time to work on your personal art.

1.one of my personal goals im trying to chip away at is perfectionism - personally i've always been quite slow, every single detail had to be perfect to me, every pixel had to be accounted for... i grew up more with an anime illustration background and all of those drawings on pixiv looked incredibly neat and tidy to me. they're still amazing! i love rei_17! rella! but eventually (sometime in early 2023) i found that the process didn't work for me anymore, and i became increasingly frustrated with my illustrations, as much as i still yearned to be an anime illust artist. i strongly felt then that my art needed to change.

^ while technically impressive, these are the kinds of details that killed me AHAHAA...

^ another tetia! nowadays i opt to imply detail more in my work. the lineart does most of the work, and i draw with a very loose hand; there's tons of extraneous and flyaway lines and stuff, but i like that it adds imperfection and character. the shadows are also quite loose and a chunky textured brush helps loads - i'm not constantly going in and erasing or spending too much time sculpting highlights and shadows.

in the last two years, some ways i've been trying to combat perfectionism is - sketchy lineart! don't rely on CTRL+Z as much! erase the lineart if i need to! it's okay if colours go over the lines! use a more blocky brush and imply details instead and not rely so much on rendering. use multiple different brushes for the colouring! experiment & trust the process!

^ part of my fakir from my princess tutu drawing! like i mentioned, the lineart does most of the work and cuts down heavily on rendering time. this particular drawing focuses less on the depth of the colour palette, in reference to the rather flat art nouveau style.

the subject matter i choose also helps, i really like to draw organic objects like flowers and clothing, of which you can stylize heavily and bend the rules a little bit. it's very easy to "cheat" both of these things HAHAHA. i'm also not the best at anatomy, so i will stylize that in subtle ways too, and make use more of shapes (everything in the body is either just a cylinder or a rectangular prism...). anything to help me get that illustration done and not get so worked up in little details.

^ flynn, my character. the lineart is extremely scratchy and sparse. notice how the dress is composed of loose squiggly lines - instead of rendering all of the tulle fabric folds, i wanted to imply the looseness of the fabric instead. i also drew over the lineart with a coloured line if i felt some areas needed to be more emphasized, or more hidden, once adding colours. lineart is adjustable and im only learning this now! a textured brush, as opposed to a smooth brush, also helped me just trust the process of slapping highlights and shadows on, and to enjoy imperfect, uncalculated brush strokes.

ANYWAYS. sorry i went on such a tangent about perfectionism. it's such a deeply personal topic to me, and trying to chip away at such a flaw definitely helped me finish some old ass art. to reiterate, it's not about being more "messy" in your art, putting less effort, being lazy or sloppy or whatever. it's about accepting imperfections as they come, knowing when to render certain areas more and when to leave them be, and realizing that your art doesn't need to be as pixel perfect as you think it needs to be. and my point is that hopefully this skill will help you gain more confidence in your ability to finish illustrations.

2. another thing you can work on is to schedule time to work on your illustrations.

admittedly, it's weird to think about, and feels rather "corporate", but think of it as a task to cross off on your planner for the day!! try it before bed or after dinner, i find that's a good time to get in a few extra minutes, or you can try to squeeze time in during weekends and holidays if possible.

if your computer is already on (or if you have an ipad it makes it way easier, even better if you do illustrations traditionally), try to set a timer for like, 20 minutes (the time recommended in the pomodoro method). you'd be surprised how much you can accomplish within 20 mins.... it might be a bit slow at first, and you might think you'll never finish that drawing if you only go in small increments but imo after a few times you'll feel more confident. trust me... ive had drawings decomposing in the vault for 1-2 years... and i still revived and finished them! you got this, you WILL finish those illustrations!! 🫵

i won't say anything else about time management because i'm personally terrible at it and i'll be a hypocrite if i say anything like, "do quick 5 minute sketches to help you draw quicker"! i'm not much of a sketcher admittedly, which is probably my biggest downfall and otherwise could lead to more potential in me i guess...

apologies for the late response on this, twas a difficult question to answer!