Hello! And thank you! I hope you're having a good end of the year too.
I get a lot of work done - and still not as much as I'd like - because I've spent a while thinking about how to best do that, and arranging my life to enable it. Art is my main priority, but the idea of it just happening is bullshit. Maybe it does if you've got rich parents or are far enough into a career and earning residuals so you can set your own schedule and fill your days how you want and creativity is a relaxing organic experience (doubt it, willing to investigate if anyone wants a trophy husband), but most of us can't do that. I have a horrible job and need a structure, and it might help you too.
I did a lot of the inking on You're So Cool while I was at the end of recovering from surgery, but that was unusual. It was great, I felt pretty good and I was doing 3 to 4 pages per day. It slowed down a lot when I went back to work.
I currently work eight hour days (technical writer), plus about two hours unnecessary commute (it used to be a WFH job lol) so it eats 50 hours per week. It comes easily to me and I needed health insurance for surgery, I don't like or care about it. There are jobs where the level of emotional disengagement I have reached is not possible, I prefer it so I can put the energy into art. I work 7am to 3pm - I leave around 6am (ten minutes after rolling out of bed), but I'm home and in the shower by 4pm. This gives me a lot more evening, as I usually go to bed around midnight.
Before this, I had a wretched decade that ended in depression. I did almost nothing for years, partly due to shitty circumstances, and coming out of it cemented the idea that I needed to be very proactive. I want an art career again - and this might not work out for me, who knows, the point is I'm trying. Someone who wants to carve out more time to spend on a hobby may be less intense.
There's a lot of advice around about balance, being kind to yourself, seasons/breaks, etc. I don't think they're wrong, but they apply to the "forgiving yourself for not doing" bit. My goal is to do things, I care a lot about what I'm doing and I'm happiest when actually doing it. How do I improve that? Not by taking a break, I was taking a break and it made me fucking miserable. Forgiving myself for not doing art wasn't solving my problem of I am not doing art and I want to.
The following system works for me. You could try it out - it's easy to start, you don't need anything for it, you could be on your way in half an hour. And before you go any further: do not turn maintaining the system into a task in itself. Making a list is a step towards doing, but do not turn the list into the doing. Do not spend weeks looking for the perfect app/planner or setting up elaborate colour coding and making it pretty. Stay basic. The art is the point.
I have a text file for the year with a list of goals. Some are creative, some are personal, some are practical. I add and remove throughout the year, and every month I look through that list and use it to make a list of things for the month (in the same text file). There are things on the month list that didn't make the master list, like painting glow in the dark eyes all over a jacket or filing my taxes.
Each week I write a list out in a physical planner - what can I do this week towards the month goals (plus other life stuff)? Every night before I go to bed I look at this list and write out a to-do list for the next day on scrap paper - what steps can I do towards the week goals? What else do I need to do tomorrow?
For example, the breakdown for You're So Cool looked like:
- Year level task: draw You're So Cool
- Month level tasks: thumbnails, pencils, inks, colour, scan and process, send for print (not all in one month)
- Week level tasks: pencil 10 pages, choose a printer, test ink/inkwash to decide paper/look
- Day level tasks: pencil page 4 and 5, get quotes from the two printer websites, check paper/tape and make list of supplies needed
The day list has the most unrelated items, like cleaning the shower or going to the post office. Knowing what I'm doing helps me plan. I can adjust if something comes up (maybe I decide to go out with friends).
The point of these lists isn't to torture myself, it's to get things done. I move things around, I delete and add. I just finished rolling over the stuff I didn't get to this year into the 2026 text file and a few things got shelved or removed. I didn't hit all of my 2025 goals, but I did some stuff I didn't plan on too. The year list can be ambitious, keeping potential projects/goals visible, but the month/week/day lists should be increasingly realistic.
After a few years, I've got a good idea of what I can do. I know my speed and capacity - do you know yours? Aim low at first, go for some easy wins. Do not best-case-scenario this because most days are not best case scenarios. If I have time and energy to do an extra page, that feels ten times better than biting off more than I can chew and choking.
I tape all my comic pages up next to my desk. I want to keep what I'm doing in my mind as much as possible - it often stops me from wasting time, because there's a whole wall of stuff right there I'd actually rather do! I have a text file full of random art ideas that I look at when I'm at a loose end or sulking too.
This morning I pulled some penciled paintings that have been stacked on my shelf for ages taped them to my wall. I want to do them, I'm a bit annoyed I didn't make time for them this year - now they're right there. I'm thinking about them.
I guess my whole approach is recognising things that aren't contributing to being the person and artist I want to be and changing them. Derailing a bad habit/mindset/spiral/distraction works best when you've got something else to switch to, preferably quickly and easily.
It's incremental too; the massive sudden overhaul won't usually stick long term because it ignores your whole life outside that one thing. You are here because of your whole life, and cramming art into it as-is isn't working well. You can change your life to make room - but not overnight. There isn't a shortcut, unfortunately. If there was, I would never shut up about it. I can tell you that the long way feels less arduous and you appreciate and enjoy the journey more and more as you claw back your time and energy.
If you don't have the energy for warm ups right now, don't do warm ups. Do what you actually feel excited about and the energy will start to come. What gives you that little spark of enjoyment? And be honest with yourself - what do you actually want to do, right now? Not what you want to want to do or think you should be doing. I wish I wanted to thumbnail a pretty heavy NewOldRare script right now, but I don't. The past few months have been hard and I'm feeling kinda low, so I'll probably make some teeth or paint sketchcards. I've got multiple projects and lots of little things, I can switch for a break when I get stuck or out of sorts. This has helped me get faster at recovering, because inactivity makes a feedback loop for me.
I got back into drawing/writing after a long break because what I had energy to come home from an awful job and work on was Reservoir Dogs fanart/fanfic. Not the comics ideas I'd been neglecting for years. I sat on my childhood bed in a city I hated, drank gin, listened to music, and drew an absolute fuckload of fanart. I wrote a lot of fanfic too, some of it on my phone at work. What I couldn't post on tumblr, I texted to friends who were interested in horny sketches of Quentin Tarantino characters. None of this was "useful" in a direct way like making portfolio pieces or putting together a book pitch, but it was more than I'd done for seven miserable years.
After about six months of that, I started to shift to original work. I didn't have an epiphany or a huge emotional turning point, I just got back into the habit of making something until it was coming naturally, the way it used to. Start with low pressure stuff. Finish some pieces - and don't start big things you aren't sure you can finish. Find other people who are doing creative things because it winds up being contagious.
Self-teaching is different for everyone. After resources and practice, my final step is always a project I care about. Seeing how you want to use this new skill in your own work is the whole point. Don't bore yourself!
A side effect of all this is that I now feel pretty good about myself, and being honest about what I can do has bled over into other areas of my life. I'm doing more, it's getting easier. I can read my own emotions better and know when to push through a bad mood and when to step away. Seeing other artists succeeding doesn't make me feel as much like I'm failing any more - and I have failed, a lot.
I'm not anything special, just a stubborn middle-aged man who won't quit. You can do it! It's worth the effort!
