Should art-making be fast or slow?

Looking at Art:

Paintings by the Abstract Expressionists were direct and spontaneous and were part of the hottest art movement of the mid twentieth century. Perhaps the appeal of this art was the obvious quick and spontaneous motion of the artist’s body while applying paint directly to the large canvases. These works have an immediacy that is related to the artist’s technique. They may be very far from the studied time consuming work involved in traditional painting. Is the quality of a painting related to how quickly the medium is applied, or does the speed relate only to the style of the artist? Should artists practice both quick and slow art-making?

Work in the Studio:

Every week I attend life drawing sessions that are offered in a open studio with a live model without instruction. Drawing the figure from life is, in my opinion, a great challenge for any artist. When you add the fact that poses last from 2 minutes to only twenty minutes for each drawing, the difficulty is magnified. I love the short poses, but when the model switches to the twenty-minute sessions, my expectations for my drawings seem to go up and the quality of my results seems to go down, therefore, I decided to practice twenty-minute sketches at home in an attempt to improve. Here is an example of a twenty-minute sketch of my own face.

Quick Sketch, Watercolor, 9” x 8’