I have always thought the main secret was hard work. Years of learning and years of taking that learning to a personal place. This is not the easy path. It's the one less taken.
Hockney is not so different from these art students seeing that there is a long, tough road and an easy path (even if it's a dead end). The masses take the easy path and some actually end up with a name - in the case of Hockney.
I met a guy once that had been a Chinese language major. He said there were 200 students signed on as Chinese majors as a freshman and 4 graduated as such. The odds in art are similar.
