The Miracle of Practice

“Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.” Vincent Van Gogh

If you ever feel stressed out sometimes, because the vision you want to manifest isn’t satisfying you completely, have patience my friend, with practice, that vision will come to be realized, and it will look even more beautiful then your own imagination.

Just the simple fact of correcting each little mistake every day will make the difference in the future.  You realize this when you look back at your oldest work and see details you could not perceive, simply because you did not have the consciousness.

And so all those hours of desperation evaporate in an instant, as you realize that it is only through continuous daily practice that you will arrive at that beauty you so long for.

As I am going through a total update of this Blog I have noticed such a difference with the photographs I used to take one year ago.  The disappointment because the picture did not show what I was seeing, has now turned in rejoice for I now understand how to maximize the capacity of my little camera, and add what is missing through a better understanding of the editing program. What a difference.

And so it is the same with anything else that we learn to do.

I saw a documentary about Picasso the other day showing the amount of research, studying, observation and hundreds of sketches he did before he realized his first cubic painting, resulting in his particular style. And that gave me so much peace and compassion towards myself.

“The sketch may have taken me five minutes, but the learning took me 30 years,” Picasso.

So with this new painting, I have embarked on a new journey of discovery with Acrylic paints which I have not used since I was a teen in school.
I thought of trying the paints to see how they worked and to do so by painting freely,  like with oils many moons ago, allowing the painting to reveal itself while working on it. But in reality, it seemed only a great confusion and a waste of paint. I have been used for so long to have the structure of Mandala before any coloring, that I felt like having to build a house without the foundations.

So I continued by outlining the vision first with colored pencils and then apply the paint. What an adventure. What was supposed to be just a trial became a serious project that lasted nearly three weeks, and only because I decided to stop it on Friday. There could be so much more I could add, but I was very tired of it, The End needed to be applied.

The whole focus was to become acquainted with the paints and the brushes, making them become what I needed to proceed. As you can see from the pictures the painting wanted to be a mix of colors integrating one another like the rainbow, and this is the beauty of paints, you can have so many shades, but the hard part is getting the mix right in each section to get that harmony!

What a laugh. Every color on its own looked completely different than when next to another. And you wonder how many possible shades of blue can there be? A comparison then becomes necessary to see the difference. Here you have one that looks too blue but when compared to the blue, in fact, it is more violet but with violet, it is not so violet. And so on with each one!

Every turn a little new discovery. Then I would go back with the new knowledge and redo what I just did. And it seemed that I was never progressing, always stuck on the same point.
But in reality I was moving forward little by little, I was just learning.

So the journey continues and we have to endure, because beauty will reveal itself to us at one point, by working at it patiently. Studying it and trying, risking and more trying, until we finally get it. And then the road gets less bumpy!! And then we will be able to create magic just in five minutes too!

Hope you like it. Happy creating!