This is what happens when one guy practices art every day for nine years

There are internal and external roadblocks when trying to learn a new skill as an adult and sadly both become reinforcing. Externally I think there's a lot of cynicism from other people wondering why you are bothering trying to learn something new as an adult. They doubt that you can do it for various reasons including the favorite that you're too old to learn and that you must have started when you were five because the brain is so ripe.

But I always thought that belief was illogical, especially if you believe learning itself is an actual skill. If learning is a skill as much as say drawing, then you should only become better at trying new things as you get older.

Atelier.

I had to look that up. Turns out it's French for "artist workshop". [0] Why not just use the plain English equivalent? But that's not what was interesting. Digging around I noticed http://www.classicalartonline.com Did everyone miss this?

Making a dollar in art is difficult. It's so difficult that markets exist to make art to order, to solve some problem. Usually selling a product. Advertising. This really isn't art but design. Fine art doesn't solve any problem other than the artists own. As a result, fine art can be an acquired taste and difficult to sell. So how would you go about making a business online with fine art? That was an idea pg had and became "The Artix Phase" [1] before Viaweb. Art galleries online. At the time the idea didn't work.

That's what makes "classical art online" interesting. Learning art online would be difficult though. A lot of the learning happens as a tutor looks over your shoulder, sees the result & makes suggestions in technique, subject and a multitude of other related tasks that make up the craft. The learning happens in the dynamic of pupil, tutor. It's personal and I don't know how you make this process scale without a tutors presence.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atelier

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/bronze.html

"Nothing in this world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts.

Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.

The slogan 'Press On" has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race. ~ C Coolidge

All of the life drawings, anatomy lessons, and lighting studies were incredibly important. He was able to easily apply these understandings to a new medium, so by the time he switched over he quickly excelled. I feel that if he'd started earlier with paint he would have blasted off once he saw the impact of his own work.

I appreciate this from a technical standpoint. It sort of shows the "man behind the curtain" of creating two dimensional visual art pieces, especially because you can see it in such a condensed format. We've all seen progressions of an artists body of work in art publications and curated shows, but what makes this rewarding is we get to see all of the early, average attempts. It's not like we could pick up a book on Picasso and see his first 2000 drawings, but if we could, we would gain the instructive aspects of watching an artist progress.

For those who keep mentioning the 10,000 hour rule, I wonder if anyone has heard of any tools for tracking this number? As in, a tool for logging hours spent practicing different subject areas with the specific goal of reaching 10,000 hours. I wonder, too, if you could quantify smaller subsets of the 10,000 to provide more immediate feedback and goals along the way.