Saturday, November 14

I was recently reading a book on Mozart and the text mentioned that he had practiced playing for over 10,000 hours by the age of six. This got me to consider, what does it take to truly be great in your chosen field. After a little research I discovered that many neurologists believe that the magic number -- across arts, science, sports, and industry -- seems to be 10,000 hours. Supposedly this is the number of hours that both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs spent programming before launching their respective companies.

I certainly do not believe that practice alone makes one exceptional in your chosen field; clearly there is more involved than merely showing up to work each day, especially in the arts where having a meaningful goal and a little creativity accounts for some level of talent.

As I began contemplating 10,000 hours of studio practice for my artwork, I began attempting to calculate how many hours I spent as a student (hoping to use this number towards my total 10,000!). Unfortunately, I came across a quote from the legendary ballet teacher, Margaret Craske. Miss Craske taught at the Metropolitan Opera Ballet School, Juilliard, and the Manhattan School of Dance. She claims that the first eight years are learning spent learning how to be a student (i.e. how to study), and that it takes the next eight years (i.e. 10,000 hours) to learn your technique.

So having finished graduate school a mere 2.5 years ago, I am going to begin this blog as an effort to document my progress towards 10,000 hours of studio practice legitimately learning my technique. Each entry will show what I am working on at the beginning of the day, and its progression at the end of the day. Only hours spent with tools in hand (i.e. pencils, paintbrushes, woodcarving tools) will count towards the 10,000 hours (reading or talking about work will not suffice). I am 31 years old, and I would love to have this project completed in 5 years, which comes to 38.5 hours a week, or 5.5 hours a day. This is a pretty daunting task considering that I have a full time job, but one that I am going to attempt to undertake, nonetheless.

The above painting (which I have had unfinished in my studio for well over a year) represents the first two hours.