Simon's Blog

Good old Malcolm Gladwell – he really has set me on my way.  For those of you who don’t know Mr Gladwell was the author of Outliers: The story of success in which he puts forward the idea of you can only be considered a master in a subject if you have put in 10,000 hours of practice.  Well at least I think he does but as I have only got my general knowledge (should that be general ignorance I’m really not sure) and Wikipedia your guess is as good as mine.

At the moment I am reading a rather depressing history of Stalin written by an American academic – high on detail and accuracy low on fluidity and style – much the same as the high end of American journalism – well at least viewed from this side of the Atlantic where we are used to a more rip roaring approach which unfortunately lead to the hacking scandle so perhaps it is not that food after all.  To compare and contrast this heavy tome I am listening to the latest of Stephen Fry’s autobiography which really is the mirror image of the Stalin history – light on real detail other than the title tattle of every day life and written with Fry’s delightful style, both lucid and ludicrous at the same time.  Another gem.

Which brings me to hair.  Over the past few days I have been working on a painting of young friend of mine.  After some false starts, documented in this blog, I have slowly created a painting that is in some ways satisfactory, only some ways.  So now I have to address the vexed question of how to paint the hair with no real idea how to proceed even after studying how  great and not so great painters have approached the problem. One the reason for this is that they have had years of experience, 10,000 hours again, whilst I’m a neophyte struggling to find his own rhythm.  The only way forward is to sit down and get my hands dirty, both metaphorical and literally, after all I have many more hours to mark off before I reach 10,000.