Getting Over Perfectionism.
I don’t think of abstraction as a theoretical concept. Rather, it seems to be the cure to an artistic disease. I know I have to edit what I see before I put it down on a piece of paper.
Perfectionism has a common traveling companion: the conviction that a good piece of work must by definition be hard to do. An old boss of mine from one of my various dead end jobs had a saying: the easy way is the right way.
I think he meant, more or less, that there is an efficient and natural way to do a thing, and a lot of inefficient and counterproductive ways to do the same thing. If we keep running into roadblocks, and find that something is starting to seem impossibly difficult, then maybe we should think about a different way of doing it. Drawing every tiniest detail eventually gets to be infinitely frustrating, and the result usually looks like an impenetrable mess.
I’ve struggled with this concept for a long time. My professors used to look over my shoulder at whatever masterpiece I happened to be slaving over, and ask me “Where am I supposed to look?” All I could do is say: “Everywhere!”
