General question on work efficiency

[Edward II of Kenland]

Hello, I am still quite a novice to art and cartography this really is pretty much my only artistic outlet that I pursue. I spent the past week or so working on this knight here which is really just a tracing of one of the knights in the Maciejowski Bible with me changing the helmet to be more of a von Dargen pattern great helm. In total I would say this took me around 15 hours or so to do. Is this a sort of average for how long a work like this takes? My ongoing project of mapping my own Kingdom of Kenland has taken me a long time which I am fine with, however the majority of my time spent with my mapping there is essentially just drawing roads and placing down towns and names, which is one step above data processing. Thank you for all of the advice and insights to everyone at the guild here, it has been very hepful and inspirational.

[wminish]

Hi Edward

I think that time taken is something that varies greatly with your level of experience and the style and tools that you use.

For my own work, I work in physical materials and generally at A4 size. For a region map such as my Fallen lands map, it would generally take me 6 - 8 hours. For an Isometric city map such as my Hollace Isometric map I would expect to spend more like 12 - 16 hours. Based on professional pricing that I've seen for commissions I would assume that the time it takes me is a little longer than average for this sort of work. I know that there are people that spend hugely longer than this working on individual pieces though, large (A3 - A2) hand-drawn maps like the ones that Impractical Cartographer does can take a very long time.

In general, I would say that as you get more experienced you'll work out ways to work faster. There are also definitely some techniques that are quicker than others. For my maps for example, I suspect that if I moved to working on a computer it would initially take me longer but there are optimisations that I could make which would eventually make the process quicker.

Unless you are trying to work professionally on a commission basis I don't think the time taken really matters anyway. If you are enjoying it and you are happy with the quality of your work then that's all that really matters.

[Ilanthar]

For me, illustration is way faster than mapping (it's reinforced by the fact that I'm mostly doing lineart with some shading, but not complex coloring/shading and not very big illustrations).
It's still time consuming, but more like a few hours than tens or hundreds...
You get faster with practice, but each new thing or you try needs practice, so...

[KMAlexander]

What Ilanthar said.

Practice! Practice! Practice! Practice! Practice!

It's always slow in the beginning, but with each new piece, you get just a little bit faster.

[Edward II of Kenland]

Thank you all for your information and encouragement!