Getting it ‘right’

September 20, 2013

The idea of getting something right in a painting is something that probably a lot of people don't get to experience. Maybe only people who paint or who do something artistic get to feel this, or maybe it is something that can be applied to any other thing that one does in their life.

E.H. Gombrich, the author of The Story of Art says this is something that everyone, not only artists, gets to feel; he says that “there is hardly any person who has not got at least an inkling of this type of problem”. He mentions how nearly everyone wants to get something ‘right’, be it an arrangement of flowers or the right proportion of food in ones plate.

The idea of getting something right in a painting is something that I have experienced many times, through my own paintings. Most of the time it comes when you are unsatisfied with your painting, even though it looks done. You feel that something is missing, even if it is a tiny thing that you need to add or change. Most of the time, I don't even know what it is that I am missing, and it might either take me an hour to look at my painting to figure it out or trying to add or remove things. All I know, is that when I find that one thing it was missing and I finally see my painting complete I know that it is ‘right’. Until then, I feel satisfied.

The reason why I talk about getting things ‘right’ is that while I was reading The Story of Art I realized that I have been feeling this way about my documentation and my reflections.  Even though I think I am doing my documentation right and decent, I still feel like if there is something missing. And now I see it like that hint of green that I am missing in the flowers that I am painting.

For my daily reflections I think I know what I am missing. As I have stated before in one of  my reflections, I don't believe that writing out my daily activities helps that much and I don't think I would want to read them in the future. Yet, this is what I have been doing, I have just been explaining everything that I have done in  my day. What I want to write now is about a certain topic, about something that will help me in the future or something that will help me look back and understand what I was thinking about at the time that I wrote it.

As for my documentation I don't know what I am missing, the only thing that is left for me is to keep on trying new things and ways to document until I find that thing that I am missing.  What I will try to do from know on is try to write a paper or a short paragraph of what my opinion of a certain book or chapter is.

Well, at the end what I am reaching for in my documentation and my daily reflections is the feeling of getting it ‘right’. As E.H. Gombrich puts it “But once he has succeeded we all feel that he has achieved something to which nothing could be added, something which is ‘right’ – an example of perfection in our very imperfect world.”