Sugar Words

I started learning sketching and painting from the age of 5 and from as far as I remember, I never liked the wait between sketching and painting. I always would want to jump to the coloring part.

Some years back I painted a canvas with musical instruments overlapping each other. It took me 7 days to sketch and another one month to paint it. But the result was still not as appealing to my eyes as I imagined. That was when I realized that even the most planned things can go strikingly wrong. The end result could be something you never wanted.

Around the same time, I stopped sketching things out in my life before I dive into the favorite part. Because the chances that we humans will be satisfied with the outcome of anything we do is pretty slim. So then why to trade off living or delaying your favorite part for something improbable?

So, over the years I deleted the wait completely. My hands would wrap around the brushes as soon as I am put in front of a white screen. That is not to say that unplanned things don’t end up in a disaster. They obviously do!

But from what I know is that even in the most disastrous paintings I have managed to discover something beautiful. And at least before I blundered, I lived and enjoyed the fleeting moments and if that is not something significant then I don’t know what is.

Although no matter how hard we humans try, we are hardwired to plan things out. So, did I, without realizing that I was planning what strokes would make my canvas prettier and less ruinous as soon as I would dip the paintbrush in the colored glass bottles.

Fast forward many paintings, wrong decisions, and some of the best days of my life. I now know for a fact that if you plan too much before you hit the dance floor, you most probably will be short of energy and stage presence. Because all the while you have been thinking about how can you make your painting, your move, your career perfect.

Yet you completely forgot that it’s not just about the practice but also about how your hand dances over the white canvas giving it the meaning it deserves, how your glittering smile is what makes your dance performance wholesome and your happiness with what you do for a living is what makes your career perfect. All these make you perfect because they make you happy in the rawest, most real way ever.

As an artist and a spectator, I learned that in every painting 3 strokes are the most important.

1) The one that is far away from the perspective of the painting.

2) The most contrasting stroke

3) The one made with the highest degree of confidence.

And then there are 3 strokes that make your life a beautiful painting: –

1) To have the ability to see things from a different perspective, a perspective that is far away from most people’s reach but always in front of all the eyes. Catch hold of that perspective, that vision.

2) To have the guts to be different, to stand out from the background, to not fear being called the odd one out. To be contrasting in all the possible ways.

3) To embark upon everything, with all the confidence you can gather. Look straight into the eyes of what lies ahead of you and just go all in.

Do you all know when is a masterpiece created? When all these three strokes converge into one single stroke.

Inspired from movie ‘The Half of it‘.