I’m a perfectionist, especially when it comes to my art. I focus way too much on the intricate details of my paintings and end up blurring my vision from being so up close to the paper. It’s difficult for me to not stress over the details, to make sure lines are straight, colors match, and proportions are correct.
I do realize that I do this. It’s clear to me I need to worry less about all the little things going on in my paintings. The painting I’m working on now has taught me an important lesson that I think I always knew, but never really grasped.
My watercolor mentor tries to get me out of my nitpicking by either telling me to put my brush down, move to another painting, or by physically taking my board away from me so I can’t continue. When he takes my board from me, he’ll show me my work from further away and sometimes flip it upside down to see what I think.
This painting I’m working on is a little more complex and intricate than what I’ve done in the past. There are a lot of rocks in the original photo and lots of different colors and details to focus on (what a great combination for a perfectionist). Before now, I had never painted a scene like this with all these different rocks along the ground, so my teacher was instructing me on how to go about it.
If you’ve painted with watercolors, you’ll know it takes a lot of layering to get the desired effect. With these rocks, I’ve been layering and layering with different colors and values, trying really hard to make these blobs of color look like rocks, but to no avail. When I’m looking at it, all I see is blobs of color! So I continue getting more picky and try making my lines crisp and exact until every single new line is perfect.
Then he takes my board from me. No! I’m not done with that rock!
“Tell me what you’re thinking with the painting right now.” He prompts me as he holds it away from me.
“Oh shit… that actually looks like rocks from far away.” Is my response. And it’s true. When I’m looking at each individual rock, it really doesn’t look good, but as soon as he shows me it from a few feet away, the details slip away and I’m left looking at not just individual aspects, but at the whole painting.
So this moment had me thinking about life and how I see the world and how a lot of others probably see the world too.
We focus so much on all this minutiae in our lives; the weather, the rude driver, our anxiety about uncontrollable future events, and all these other trivial matters. We never take a step back and see the whole picture. We never take a second to realize how insignificant this seemingly “bad” moment is in the grand scheme of things or how little other people notice or care about the things we do.
Why do we stress over the way we dress when we go to the grocery store? Who cares if you fumbled over your words when you were speaking in front of the class? You’re losing your mind because that person was rude to you on social media?
None of it really matters when you look at the whole picture. All of these small events are all a part of a gigantic system that we can never fully understand. Look at your life as a whole. Both how far you’ve come and how far you’ll go from here. Your “painting” is your entire life.
These details you’re focusing on are just the pebbles in the background. Yeah they add to the painting, but they’re not the full picture.
Hand your board to someone else and look at it from a few feet away. See how your perspective changes.
April 30, 2021
