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Originally Posted by William Whitaker
Emily is very talented, but . . .
She has wonderful patience . . .
Her visual perception became very keen indeed.
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These are all incisive clues to what is going on here, over and above the mere accounting for time spent on any given drawing. Even a very talented individual still needed to further train her eye and internalize that skill so that it became second nature, so that with each new start, the likelihood diminishes that significant errors in perception will be made. It's hard work. Some days it's exhausting.
It's the difference between just beating the odds at an archery range, waiting for the official score to see how you did, and knowing even before you release the arrow that it will hit center, a result that you can already "see" and that you have trained yourself to ensure through a correct attitude.
I was not untalented -- and perhaps that was itself an impediment, because I wasn't used to not "getting" something pretty quickly, and impatience and boredom and ego were serious threats -- but I was just playing the odds for nearly 1-1/2 years into this kind of training. A lot of drawings were good, some weren't, so what. It wasn't terribly satisfying, though -- often discouraging or humiliating, as my studio mates drew and painted their way toward remarkable images -- and during those 1-1/2 years when no real progress seemed to be made, I often despaired of ever "getting" this. And then "suddenly" -- that is, dozens of drawings and hundreds of hours later -- I began to see and to transcribe accurately what it was I saw. Progress was being made after all.
And not a moment too soon, because I was thinking a lot about getting into marine biology or interstellar physics or . . . anything that was easier than drawing well.
In some circles the advice is given: "Don't leave before the miracle happens!" The miracle in this work is the transformation of perception, and it will come in its own time, while we're working. For me, it took its own sweet time, thank you, but it was worth the wait.
You have to turn off the TV, though (a metaphor for all manner of distractions), if you want this.