Some years ago, I was invited by an artist friend to sit for his painting class. “All you have to do is sit for 3 hours.”
“Sure,” I replied, ” I can do that.” Little did I realize that being a model is hard work! After the class, I walked around and looked at the various depictions of myself. One painting stood out (see image above). It was painted by an Italian-American and I told him I might be interested in purchasing it. “When I finish it, I’ll let you know,” he said. He sent me a photograph of the above ‘unfinished’ painting which was a stroke of luck I learned later. Two weeks later he showed me the ‘finished’ painting and it was pretty awful – nowhere as fine as the earlier one.
Well, I did not buy the ‘finished’ painting but treasure the ‘unfinished’ one. This made me compare painting with writing. After writing a first draft, there may be several drafts more before we declare the project completed. In both disciplines, it vital to know when to stop!
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