My Chances With Art Never Ran Out

Becoming an artist, and then creating art, has given me a larger perspective on life and taught me several lessons that can be applied to life beyond art.

Around the middle of my journey as an artist, I had this idea that I had to get every drawing, portrait, or anything else I created exactly right. If I couldn’t get it right the first time, then I was an utter failure. And not only did I think I was a failure, I refused to go back and draw the picture again. In my head, I had already failed, so I wasn’t going to try again. I absolutely had to draw the picture perfectly the first time.

Looking back at myself now, I would simply say, how foolish of me to think that I had to be perfect—so perfect that I couldn’t make a mistake.

In fact, every human being I have ever met has made mistakes in life. Through creating art, I learned that I wasn’t perfect, and I wasn’t always going to get things right the first time. Hell, I might even make a mistake the second or third time—maybe even the fourth, fifth, sixth, or seventh.

The truth is, I am going to make mistakes throughout my entire life. But that doesn’t mean it’s the end of the world, or that I can’t fix or mend what I think I have broken.

So what did I do?

I took my mistake and created a masterpiece.

All it took was one piece of artwork to show me how foolish I had been, and that sometimes all I had to do was grab an eraser and draw the picture again. And if that failed, I could try a second time. Even if I made a mistake the third time, I could erase the picture and start all over again.

My chances with art never ran out.

All those mistakes gave me insight into life. When I opened my eyes to that insight, it helped me become a better artist and a better person.

Art taught me a lesson I never knew I needed. Now I know that I needed to see my failures up close so that I could step back, see the bigger picture, and create something that could become a masterpiece.

One mistake led me to redraw a portrait. A second mistake led me to use watercolor paint to repair a torn and cracked illustration board. A third mistake led me to learn how to mix colored pencils with watercolor paint and create something much better than what I thought had been ruined.

Don’t give up.

Try again, until you succeed.