I was pleasantly surprised when I thought I finished my last painting. I let it sit in my studio a day, and then looked at it again. I found what I thought was small correction, made that, and I became aware of two other small corrections that I did not see the first time. I made those, and was surprised to see three other small corrections that needed to be adjusted. Then two more, then one more, than two more, and so it went for some time.
Why did I not see all these corrections the first time? Why do I keep discovering new corrections after I make the ones I did see? It suddenly dawned on me, that I kept discovering new corrections because the earlier set of corrections created the need for the new corrections. In other words, my painting is a whole. If I change any one part of it, I change the dynamic of the whole painting. Doing this creates new deficiencies that I need to correct, or that become obvious after I have made the first ones. This is a wonderful, but annoying process. I think I am done, only to fix the problem and find it created new ones, and that this goes on for sometime. The wonderful thing about this is if I am making my corrections properly, the process eventually converges on a solution where I am happy with all of them and the painting is done.
The hard part of this process is to keep going. I find I try hard to convince myself at different points that everything is okay. That I have finally got all the changes I need, but then there is that nagging in my gut that is telling me I am not really happy yet. I think not having the perseverance to keep going until the painting truly feels done is what defeats a lot of novice painters. It is easy to feel tired of the painting, nervous that if I make the change I need to, it will destroy my painting, or that making the needed change will destroy a beautiful passage I have fell in love with. The answer though, is the painting as a whole is what I must be happy with, and a beautiful passage in the wrong painting is not a beautiful passage because it does not fit.
Now that we have talked about the hard part, let's talk about the really hard part. This is when I go to bed at night after checking the painting numerous times, and I liked the way it looked every time. Then in the morning, I get up and put the painting in the kitchen so I can look at it during breakfast, and it still looks good to me. And the same for bedtime, and any time I look at the painting for the next week. I declare the painting done. I put the painting in a frame, and maybe I hang it temporarily in my bedroom until the next big show.
The really hard part comes when I have done another painting or two, and then glance at the painting in the bedroom and think maybe its not done. In the last painting I did this or that, and perhaps this painting needs some of that treatment. This self-doubt is really hard to deal with. I think it springs from a growth in painting technique over time and several paintings. Yes, maybe what I can do now is better than what I could do when I did the painting in the bedroom, but as a whole the painting in the bedroom satisfied me at that time, and as a whole, it is consistent skill-wise. If I start monkeying with it at this point, because of learning I have done since I finished the painting in the bedroom, stylistically any changes I make will look just a bit out of place, and to get it right I really should repaint the whole thing.
At this point, I may no longer be as happy as I was when I first thought the painting was done, but it is history, so don't change it. This is a mistake that plagues novices as well. They have to keep fiddling with a painting until it is destroyed or loses all of its life. It become so polished that it looks dead. This is something every artist struggles with all the time and with every painting or drawing -- when to stop.
Not giving up too soon, or not fixing something that does not need fixing is a very important lesson to learn. If others say a painting is done, carefully consider their opinion. It may be that I have just gotten into the habit of making changes, and need to stop before it is too late. In the end, though, only I can determine when my painting is done, and that is a skill that requires constant honing.
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