13 down, 9,987 to go

That number seems like so little. Thirteen hours? That's it?

I must preface all of this with the fact that I have probably spent, oh, 1,000-2,000 hours since I was 15 doing art that I am not counting. Heck, this past semester of working on my MFA, I was averaging 30 hours a week for a solid 15 weeks, which means a minimum

of 450 hours. And I did see a ton of improvement just in that one semester in my drawing abilities. Plus, all those hours that I have from high school and college have given me a leg up when it comes to pure knowledge about value and color theory. Half of art is learning how to "see," the other half is learning how to execute on what you see. I'm working very much on the execution right now.

But all that aside, I digress. About the past 13 hours:

I've spent a huge amount of time over the weekend painting wooden blocks in order to start doing small still life studies for color. I count the painting of the blocks because I was mixing colors, but I didn't count the six hours of shopping for the blocks. I

just have to love Singapore sometimes. Six hours of my life spent shopping for toy blocks. Such experiences, although I admit it was fun to wander around toy shops for several hours, get frustrating. In the US I could just go to a store that I knew definitely had them, and then I could be home again in an hour, tops. But, I can paint all day here, so gotta give a little, right?

But just in practicing over the past week I am already seeing an improvement in how I am handling the paint. I just finished this 5x7 black and white 7-value study for an assignment, and I really like how it turned out. Anytime that I can see a small leap forward, I call it a win. So I finish today happy and motivated, and almost ready to work on color, YES!