Lets say I give you a problem to solve. You don't know this but this problem will take the average person 40 minutes to solve.
5 minutes into solving this problem you feel you are nowhere near close to figuring it out.
Then I and a few other people appear at the 10 minute mark and tell you that this problem will take the average person 3 hours to solve and to keep going and you'll get it eventually.
What do you think would happen? Here is what I think would happen. You wouldn't solve it in 40 minutes. You would take much longer than usual just because of this new expectation you choose to believe.
/ic/ We need to consider how detrimental to improvement it is when we spread the idea that it takes a long time to get good at drawing and we need to consider how much it is holding us back. If you are sitting down today drawing and trying to figure out and understand what to do to improve you are going to improve much more slowly if you don't think you are capable of coming to conclusions anytime soon that would be a breakthrough to you. Because other people told you it takes years. Because other people told you improvement is slow and told you this is extremely hard.
The answers you are looking for to improve are closer than you think. The insightful breakthroughs you've wanted to fix every problem in your drawing are just around the corner.
You must start believing it does not take long to get good. It is necessary to know this for you to become good in the first place.
>>2537097
Well personally, I think I'd solve it in under an hour anyways. In fact, it'd spur me on because I like to feel better than other people, so I'd push myself to finish it as fast as possible. Though, I guess most people aren't narcissists that like to feel better than everyone else, so yeah, I know what you're getting at.
I think that the theory is good, but you don't consider time frame. You forget as the years go by, but most people can comprehend a few hours. So you'll perpetually be thinking, "Oh, it takes so and so long, it'll be fine." in art, while the puzzle time frame is too short to be meaningful.
TL;DR
I like the idea, though the anecdote isn't equal.
>>2537097
It doesn't take all that long to become decent/good at art. It takes a fuckload of time to become amazing at art.
I think you are very right
But if we are analysing how language distorts our expectations in that particular case, i'd say "getting good" also doesn't reflect what we really are trying to do by our artistic enterprise, "good" being subjective and not really meaning anything and stuff.
the idea "it takes a long time to get good" is probably just a global attempt at lowering our standards out of laziness and lack of drive while keeping the feeling and achievement and worth
>>2537097
Shadbase is the proof that if people don´t tell you that you need to improve, you will stop practicing and start doing. You´ll stall at one given point on the road to perfection, call it "your style", and do that forever.
The ideal way is to practice all your life, consider every piece your best effort, but not THE best effort, and continue to improve and best your own art every time.
In a hobby/profession that relies a lot on building intuition, there's an invaluable aspect in "putting in your hours" where even if you understand something, you still need to grind to internalize it so that it's second nature.
I don't doubt that expectations influence how long something takes to an extent, but I don't think it's anywhere near as radical as you suggest. Art isn't a problem with a concrete solution you can arrive at after a given amount of time. It's a cumulation of skills that gradually improves over time with training. I could compare it more to working out than to solving an equation, but even that's a faulty analogy since I think that it's easier to objectively measure your goals in physical fitness than it is in art in many cases.
