Appreciating the time it takes to become proficient and making the goal eating into that time has helped me to make sketching practice habitual. I had tried many times to sketch, but never got to the point of mastering a single piece in a satisfactory manner. This year I decided to had another go at (Urban) Sketching, again, not for the first time (I had a go in 2015, but with no success). What has made the difference, and kept me going until now, is accepting the 10,000 hour theory. Though at best an over simplification of the underlying research, this suggests anyone can be an expert if they apply themselves for 10,000 hours. So I aimed to practice just over 2 hours a day to become an expert, reasoning that I should have mastered a single sketch piece, at least, long before then. This has proven transformative. I hadn’t made much progress by the end of January 2020, but that seemed totally acceptable given I was only 60 hours into the 10,000 total. Scaling back expectations meant I was not frustrated by slow progress and the hours added in the logging app I used showed me the all important time spent was increasing - and getting in my two hours a day has become an obsession. I am prepared to wait for the repetition and skills development to redesign my neural pathways. 100 hours in and I started to feel the changes, but tempered my expectations by thinking if this was a full-time job, I was only approaching the end of my third week. Very much a novice.

I was able to sketch "Chafariz de Pintéus"" near where I live. Not bad, but not perfect either:

https://manuelaantao.blogspot.com/2020/02/an-illustrated-journey-inspiration-fro...

The notion that we are rational maximisers of utility, continually calculating the costs and benefits of every action, is one of the daftest tenets of conventional economics. Generally we carry on doing what we've always done unless/until a thumping great disruption makes us reconsider. This is why well-meaning policies to incentivise (e.g.) green behaviour by just slightly tweaking prices often fail. It takes a big tax or subsidy, or a big regulatory intervention, to make people change their behaviour.

Now when I open the sketch books I bought years’ ago, to see if I can tackle more complicated stuff, most still seem way beyond me, but I am making progress. Practice is now a pleasure.

It was an eye-opener having a look at what professionals are able to do in this "An Illustrated Journey". ( )

This collection of illustrated travel journals parallels Gregory's An Illustrated Life, providing interviews and pages from a good variety of travel sketchers... Nearly always water colonists with good skills. Above my skill set now but inspiring and I found three particularly interesting artists to dig more deeply into. ( )