To reach true mastery, yeah you need 10,000 hours, but the drawing we're looking at on this page, while nice and competent (and certainly better than I can do), does not look to me like the product of artistic mastery.
I'd suggest taking a look at Ferrari's other artwork, he's actually not an unknown and he's certainly on a level that's beyond five years in.
Actually, I boggle at anyone who thinks they're at 'mastery' at just ten thousand hours in. That's the point that you're competent, really. Masters are people who are in it for the long haul, the folks over on ConceptArt clocking in twenty+ years are masters.
Ferrari's other work or what you want to call "mastery" is all irrelevant. manuscreationis said s/he would like to be able to draw as well as what can be seen in this demo. Acquiring that level of skill does not require 10,000+ hours.
Given that you admittedly don't have that level of experience, who are you exactly to decide that again? You haven't even justified that position, you simply state it as fact. If anything, I've found your comments to mostly be "irrelevant".
Working in reduced resolution and color constraints is actually something rather challenging. Lesser artists are going to particularly suffer because they won't have experience to fall back on when they need to find workarounds, especially if their color theory is weak. You aren't going to hit Ferrari's level unless you've already got a solid foundation in place. That's easily five years to be competent at, then you can learn to work within those limitations.
I personally oversee a number of artists around five years in and I wish could get that quality of work out of them consistently.
Why I suggested you see his other work is because I don't think you're actually qualified to assess just how difficult the work is and you should see whose work you're dismissing as amatuer/entry level.
1. The concept of "mastery" is both relative and subjective, so if a skill is particularly common, then an aptitude which could be considered "masterful" in another field might simply be considered "experienced". In addition, for some skills there is not that much difference between competent work and masterful work; as a result, we'd be unlikely to consider someone a "master" of, say, bussing tables.
2. Most jobs are "unskilled", and those who have them are not practicing what they do with an eye toward improvement. They are completing the task to get their paycheck.
3. Jobs that do involve some skill typically also involve a fair amount of unskilled work (note that "unskilled work" in this sense can still require education and experience). They also tend to involve splitting one's time between multiple skills. Working full time as a lawyer for 5 years does not mean that you have spent 10,000 hours in a court room, much less arguing in front of a jury.
Now, with all that said, it's true that practice doesn't scale linearly such that you can simply say "you need x hours of practice". The human brain stops responding well to practice in the short-term and needs time to incubate, so practicing 40 hours a week for 5 years is probably not as effective as practicing 20 hours a week for 10 years.
Still, if you actually did practice the same small set of significantly overlapping skills full time for 5 years, you would be extremely good at those skills.
You might, if every one of those hours was spent perfecting your craft. For most of us, a lot of what we do at work is diluted by secondary tasks - meetings are the most common scapegoat.
