About a year ago I committed myself to never leave home without my sketchbook. I’m happy to report that I’ve been successful in this quest however one time my pencil was out of lead and lost an hour of sketch time – a real bummer. One of my beliefs is that in order to become you need to live. In other words in order to become a ball player you need to eat sleep and drink ball. In order to become an illustrator you need to live the life of an illustrator – drawing constantly. Practice makes perfect and after living well into my mid forties I’ve come to realize how short life is – thus an hour wasted is practice I’ll never get back. Also, I’m a big believer in the 10,000 hour principle – you should google it if you don’t know it. The more hours of good practice = better performance later on.

I attended a Gregory Manchess lecture last week and he referred to the the finished painting as “the performance”. I’ve always believed this and have known that you won’t perform well if you don’t practice regularly. Manchess epitomizes the consummate professional in every way: well spoken, well mannered, art work that scores on every level of artistry. You could teach an entire illustration class using only one of his paintings.

I sketched this little village on Sunday afternoon and couldn’t resist spending 10 min tossing a little color around on it in photoshop. I love my sketchbook and it’s with me…where’s yours?