The 10000 Hour Rule - Art Edition - 7626/10,000

[JakeB]

So, I'm Jake, and this is my very unscientific attempt to test the '10,000 hour rule' (It's also on tumblr at http://10000hourrule.com)



When I heard about the '10,000 hour rule' I was interested in being an artist, but I was struggling to draw every day and thought it might be an interesting challenge to try and log my hours. Partly because I thought it would be fun to see how well the theory lines up with reality, but mostly because I was lazy, and needed a goal. I started by working for an hour or so each day, when I could, and gradually worked my way up to doing it (as best I can) all of the time.


I'm not obsessed with the idea. I don't think that x amount of hours will magically make me good. Maybe it's a terrible idea... But I'm 4000+ hours in now, and it seems stupid to stop.



And, here's some links to various people talking/writing about the subject. They explain it all way better than I could. :)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHxf68nb_-o

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Outliers-Story-S...0141036257

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mastery-Robert-G...178125091X

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So, here's the first hour and a half of many :)

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[Tooth]

Nice goal, and a great start. Which Uni you at?

Hope to see regular updates!

[JakeB]

Tooth - Cheers man, I'm at Nottingham Trent, first year atm. I plan to update every couple of days. Maybe more if I've got no uni work on. We'll see.

5/10,000

Some more pencils and started off a digital study. I really have no idea what I'm doing D:

[JakeB]

Up to 10 hours

[JakeB]

Today's stuff...

Just some work on a personal illustration I might do.. Sketchbook work from early early this morning







And some other work from my head



BONUS: I cannot Linoprint for shit.


Pencil Studies




Self portrait to round off my first finished sketchbook. Ever. The first of many.


Thinking I'm gonna work on full figures more. They suck hard so far.

[JakeB]

Everything from the last couple of days.

[JakeB]

Just gonna start with an illustration I finished (maybe) for uni recently











Then... Sketchbook work since my last post. All studies except the last one.











And as you may have guessed from that, I'm doing the Crimson Daggers bloodsports this time around. Overweight wizard. Here's what I've got so far. Might just do a straight character design and environment though, rather than posing it like any of these. I just have no idea what I'm doing, and I'd really like to finish this. We'll see.











Need to work so much more from my head. It's crazy frustrating how much worse I am with that. And then working digitally on top of it. More digital studies, and applying everything more often I think. Might start doing a page of work from my head for every page of studies.

[JakeB]

Still life from today, gave up at this point because the leaves kept moving towards the light, and I'm too slow to deal with that shit ;)



And a bit more work on my wizard. It's really frustrating seeing so much awesome work everywhere and not being able to match it. But that's why I'm working. Just gotta keep it up I guess.

[Piotr Jasielski]

It's really frustrating seeing so much awesome work everywhere and not being able to match it.

It is, but don't get discouraged! All those artists started from the same point as You. You can see some of their sketchbooks on Conceptart to realize what practice does.
This is a good example: http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=97046 - see the first page and some of the last ones. Just keep on going and You will get there.

[JakeB]

It is, but don't get discouraged! All those artists started from the same point as You. You can see some of their sketchbooks on Conceptart to realize what practice does.
This is a good example: http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=97046 - see the first page and some of the last ones. Just keep on going and You will get there.

Piotr - Haha I knew where that link was going before I clicked it, I was at the same college as Miles. He got crazy good.

Anyway, been busy with uni work, catching up and stuff. But managed to do the Royal Fellas challenge today. So, here's my Squirtle. Dead fun, gonna try and do these every week.

[JakeB]

Some more work on the Bloodsports


And some studies to help

[rich4rt]

ye keep it up man, I suggest lost of gesture figures in the beginning to get a feeling of flow/proportion etc.

[JakeB]

Finally back. Been awful at posting and stuff, been crazy busy at uni. So I'm kinda drawing/kinda designing most of the time. Just not a lot of studying. Got a couple fitted in though, so here we go.

About 7.5 hours on this one. Longest I've put into a study I think.



And then this was for uni, came out kinda cool though, so figured I'd put it on here.


I'll be done with uni for the year soon, so gonna be back into doing this every day (unless I can somehow find a job over the summer). Gone so fast.

[JakeB]

So, done with uni for the year. Can't believe how fast the year went. Got a lot of stuff planned for the summer. Painting, web design, 3d, motion stuff. So many things I wanna do. Keeping busy I guess. But yeah, quick update.

Started a portrait of the queen. You know, coz I'm British, and it'd be rude not to with the jubilee and all.


And started this personal illustration I've been wanting to do for a while. Part of a series of "what I want to be when I grow up" got some cool ideas for it I think : )


Also meant I got to do the most exciting study ever

[JakeB]

Stuff from yesterday.

Couple of studies for the robokid illustration.

(This is so bad. Holy Shit)



And where he's at so far.


Did a bit more work on the queen as well :)


That's all. Back to it. :)

[JakeB]

So here's the last couple days stuff.

Just been doing studies, then directly applying them to my robokid thing.

Studies:




And this is where he's at so far:


Also, been working on a portrait/glasses study so I can work on his face/eyes in a bit.


As always, love to here what you think.

[JerryActric]

oh man ! awesome efforts ! i wanted to keep track of the 10,000 hours to haha. but im not sure what im already on :( maybe ill start at 20 haha
Keep working hard we can all progress together :)

[JonHop]

Good work, nice to see you working very hard towards your goal, (also cool squirtle). Keep working hard toward your goal!

[JakeB]

JerryActric - Haha yeah, well we'll see how long I can keep track of it for. Think it might get old pretty quick lol.

JonHop - Cheers man, I'm gonna try. It's gonna be a good summer.

So, here's today's stuff. I'm also working on my website (personal goal for the summer I guess) and doing some 3D work in cinema4D on the side. It'll be on here when it's done, no worries.

Finished the face study, pretty happy with this. 5 Hours total I think


Current state of RoboKid. I'd love any sort of crits on this by the way. Gonna keep pushing it though.



And a few pencils from imagination today. Dead fun. Gonna keep pushing imagination, wish I'd done it earlier.

[JakeB]

Not a good day today. Photoshop broke, taking an hours work with it, so spent a good hour or so troubleshooting that. Then went to do some 3d stuff, and quit C4D without saving, like a total moron. Got some decent pencil stuff done which I'll chuck online tomorrow when it's sorted, and made a bit more progress with the kid.


Only thing is, now I've spent so much time on it, and learnt a lot, I'm starting to hate the bits I did first. I dno, I'll keep at it, try and push it to a finish some time soon.

Any pointers?