Still putting in those hours

As Malcolm Gladwell says in Outliers, it takes 10,000 hours of practice to get really good at something.  I'm many, many thousand hours short of proficiency at pastels, but I'm tryin' here.

Thank God for a rainy afternoon with snow piled high and fog in the air, because it gave me the leisure to put in some more time with my new box of pastels.

Here's a group of bottles from my kitchen, arranged on a green glass plate, and filled with cuttings of Plectranthus Nicolette, which are taking root and waiting for their day in the sun.

I sat down next to that group of bottles, opened my new box of pastels, and produced this:

That shiny glass is tricky, but I think I'm on my way to capturing the effect of the light on both the bottles and on the plate the bottles are on.

As Shakespeare said, a journey of 10,000 hours starts with one hour.  No, I don't think Shakespeare said that.  Or even Malcolm Gladwell.  It's been a cliche forever.

But true!