The price of excellence

   Being good at something requires a lot of practice, perseverance,

dedication and patience. Art is not an exception. To tell the truth, art is one of

the most time-consuming activities around. You need to do a lot of gesture

drawings to capture the escence, movement and spirit of the object or person.

Anatomy studies are always imperative if you don't want your figures to look

deformed. Studying the Great Masters of the past lets you open the door to the

thinking and reasoning that led to those immortal paintings and sculptures that

never cease to amaze us. Then there's the color theory, perspective, contrast,

line weight, lighting, form, texture... the list is endless.
 
    Every little bit of free time you have, you need to spend practicing.

It's the only way to polish your skills and learn new techniques. Even when you

don't feel like grabbing that pencil, you have to give yourself a pep talk and keep

going because time will surely not wait for you. For every "good" piece you do,

you have probably done 20 horrible ones. For every sudden epiphany you get

about the way to effectively achieve a certain texture effect or the reflectiveness

of a glass cup, you have probably spent 50 hours getting it always wrong and

raging about it.You need to put in countless hours of hard work in order to

produce that which may one day be called your Masterpiece. Annoying indeed.

    People ask why I don't hang out often or why am I always drawing.

There is a price you have to pay in order to excel. In my case, it is my social

life. Art is certainly a bittersweet therapy.