As a long-time artist, I would further refine Ms. Scott’s idea to 10,000 hours of dedicated observation and serious contemplation for visual artists in the field of realism. Sure, you have to practice how to work with any given materials, but as my teacher taught me, it’s more about how to properly see what’s in front of you and lose one’s adherence to symbolic drawing one learned as a child. If one can consider how one sees objects in space, a la Dr. Betty Edwards (Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain), the progression is much faster at the outset.
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