“From the age of 6 I had a mania for drawing the shapes of things. When I was 50 I had published a universe of designs. But all I have done before the the age of 70 is not worth bothering with. At 75 I'll have learned something of the pattern of nature, of animals, of plants, of trees, birds, fish and insects. When I am 80 you will see real progress. At 90 I shall have cut my way deeply into the mystery of life itself. At 100, I shall be a marvelous artist. At 110, everything I create; a dot, a line, will jump to life as never before. To all of you who are going to live as long as I do, I promise to keep my word. I am writing this in my old age. I used to call myself Hokusai, but today I sign my self 'The Old Man Mad About Drawing.’”

I love people with that level of mastery. It's sad that so many choose to retire. Those who dive deep into their craft seem to reach such incredible levels of skill.

Here’s another anecdote that might be more to your liking. It’s true, BTW. I started drawing seriously when I was 12. Everyone considered me really amazing by 16. I consider myself to have plateaued at 20. I’m not aware of having improved in any specific way since, but I’m Disney-level good, and I can draw anything from life or imagination in a variety of styles and levels of realism. Portraits too. I’m in my mid 40s now.

I'm not opposed to the idea of continuous learning and improvement. It's more like in art (and programming as well), I vastly surpassed my original goals, and I'm already overqualified to do anything that I like to do and am interested in doing. I certainly do not have the skill or knowledge to do everything that is possible to do, but I don't care about that.

I suspect my attitude may differ from that of many artists. I'm not on a journey to explore some mystery. I just need the skills to execute on the projects that I imagine.

The gap between what I imagine and desire motivates my art and coding. "Damn, I can't find what I want to listen to. I guess I'll have to make this song up that my brain wants to hear, myself."

Reminds me of this Ira Glass quote:

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

I’m the same with music and games!

> "If it's going to take me 45 years to just get started, then I won't waste my time on it"

You'll spend your 45 years one way or another; see also "life is a journey, not a destination" and "find something you love and you'll never work a day in your life". If you hate drawing. If you love doing the activity 'drawing' then 45 years of drawing will seem like a life well spent even if you still consider yourself just getting started.

What are you going to do when you get to "I can draw"? Draw things? Spend your time drawing things? But you don't want to spend your time drawing things to get there? You know you can pay people to do that for you if you just want the result 'pictures of things', right?

I think it has a lot to do with what they said about your goals changing. When I first started painting a decade ago, my goal was to do a good oil portrait. But now, painting has become so personal and spiritual to me, that my goals aren't as external like they used to be. I realized a few years ago that while I am in the process of painting something, I have no fear in my heart. Exploring that has become more of my goal, and one could spend many lifetimes working through it.

It takes decades to get professional good at precision physical skills.

That's not to say you won't be twice as good of a drawer as you are now, in 2 years of serious practice.

But if you're measuring yourself against people who have spent their entire lives working on a thing... it's going to take some time to get to that level.

Decades feels a bit long, from what I've seen/experienced. I'd say if you're dedicated you can hit a professional level in 5-7 years.

you can get decent at drawing in 1-2 years, getting good will take a lifetime. the issue is that as you are learning to draw, you are also learning to see. your operable definition of good will be continuously changing, but the fruits of your labour probably would've been very impressive to the 'you' of 2 years ago.