Sometimes I have these ideas in my head that I want to realize as perfectly as I can. And whenever I have a new idea, I get very excited that I immediately want to start working on it.
Recently spring and flowers really inspired me to create a painting, so I thought, to keep the painting simple, I should begin with painting the sky for the picture I had in mind to create an interesting background. I thought I just start with different shades of blue, white and purple and mixed them into circles to cover the whole canvas.
At first I was happy with how it looked, but for some reason I kept painting these circle for minutes and I couldn’t stop since I always thought that it didn’t look good enough. I kept mixing and adding more paint to the canvas but every new brushstroke seemed to destroy the perfect idea I had in mind. It just didn’t look good to me. I started to get so frustrated and stressed out. I really wanted to show you the exact painting I first envisioned to maybe inspire some of you to create your own painting. So I thought maybe I need a break and do something else instead. I thought something must have been wrong because it started to frustrate me so much. And It shouldn’t be like that because I enjoy creating and sharing ideas with you guys.
And then after a while i realized what I was doing wrong the entire time. I went back to my painting and put on some music. I also covered up my workplace so I didn’t need to pay attention to spilling paint everywhere.
The problem was that I not only forced this idea to come alive but I also wanted to depict it exactly as I imagined it that I totally forgot about the whole point of me doing all this. I realized that rather than putting myself under so much pressure, I should enjoy the process of painting and allow this idea to evolve.
Then I just started playing around with my paint while having no idea what the end result was going to be. When I began adding more colors and different lines, I started to see new ideas and possibilities that weren’t part of my initial idea. Whenever I changed the perspective of the painting, I discovered that looking at it from different angles helped me to discover more ideas of what I could do with my painting that wasn’t part of my original plan. All I had to do was to let go of the idea I had in mind and just let it evolve in the process.
Whenever I was not happy with a brush stroke I made, I just painted my way out of it and made it work again. Sometimes I didn’t like t something, so I wiped off the paint or just painted over to use a different approach. By allowing myself to paint carelessly and in experimental ways I could really let my creativity flow a lot easier.
Sometimes I feel like I pay too much attention to little details that I don’t see the bigger picture. I think we are afraid of being not good enough or we think that what we want to do is not going to be good enough, only because we think it has to follow certain rules to be considered good.
I believe that being creative involves not being afraid of letting go of the original idea and allowing it to evolve during the process. Often times the original idea I start with is not the one I end up with, and that’s totally fine.
But it’s easy to forget.
If you take a close look at any random brushstroke you make, you can often find that it’s a painting unto itself. Different layers of colors and texture that tell you a story.
Instead of thinking about details and this perfect idea too much, we should rather try to see every brush stroke and every layer of paint as a piece of a puzzle and an opportunity to build an adventure.
