perfection vs. personality
Most of the time, when I’m working on something that requires something of me physically, but allows my mind to wander – gardening, painting, cleaning, drawing, walking – I put on music or listen to a podcast or audiobook. But sometimes, I give my mind quiet to see what thoughts bubble to the surface. One day, as I was painting in a quiet studio, I thought about Vincent Van Gogh and his struggle with draftsmanship. He had been on my mind a lot lately since I had been listening to a marathon audiobook biography on his life. (I finally finished it a couple of weeks ago, by the way!) He received a lot of criticism for his out-of-proportion figures, clunky faces, and wonky buildings. He knew it was a struggle, and he practiced fanatically to improve. He started using the grid method, but since he painted from life, he used
