Just Get Past the Adolescent Stage

When I am creating a piece of art, most of the time I have a clear idea of what I want the finished product to look like. When I am painting, especially on larger canvases, I do a lot of planning so I get the effect I’m looking for just right. I am a detail-oriented perfection-seeker and I prefer to put myself in the situation most likely to succeed.

Utilizing such technique makes it certain that at some stage of the work, usually smack dab in the middle of it, everything looks like shit. One of my artist friends calls this the “adolescent stage.”

If you paint you know what it is: that ugly stage where things don’t quite look right. Past the beginning yet far from the end, at a point where instinct says: This ain’t gonna work. Let’s do something else.

But you can’t! You just gotta stay calm and carry on and know that if you simply follow the steps, and do all the things you planned to do, everything will turn out fine. This requires faith. In the steps.

The thing is though, those middle stages can look so awful! It’s during the middle stages where I don’t want anyone to see my work — fearing judgement. This is especially true when doing portraits or figure painting. For some reason, the middle stages of my portraits can often look alien to the actual subject.

When I was an adolescent, I was riddled with acne, all over my face, and I recall suffering great discomfort and shame. I was teased because my body chemistry was going through an awkward transformative phase.

“It’ll go away eventually,” my dad would say, himself also a teen who had lots of pimples, “just be patient. It will all go away.”

Back then I thought it would never end, that I would have ugly marks all over my face forever. But then, one day, it was gone. And, just like Dad said, it never came back.

Teenage acne. The middle stages of an artwork. Both suck. But both are also steps towards something better. You just have to have faith and carry on.