How do you know when it’s done? This comes up a lot in conversations about creation, whether it’s making a painting, a drawing, or writing a novel.
Unless you have an editor or manager hanging over you with some kind of deadline, it’s up to you to figure out when a piece has ripened to its ideal ripeness so you can pluck that bitch before it goes bad or smash it into a pulp before anyone else knows it exists.
Luckily, I have all the answers. Here we go.
1.) Begin the painting. Spend about 1-3 hours in dopamine bliss while your hopes for the piece are still distant enough to seem achievable.
This is the artist montage stage, the one most often depicted in movies where the lady with long crimpy hair and overalls and no bra is slinging paint in a private studio flooded with natural light and good vibes.
2.) Now that you’ve started, you have two options — put it away, or leave it out.
3.) If you put it away: your ideas will marinade so you can come back to the piece with fresh eyes when you’re ready to resume working on it somewhere between one day and seventeen years from now. (If this is what you’ve done, skip to step 5.)
4.) If you leave it out:
4a.) You’ll walk past it and remember you left it out as a reminder to keep working on it, and you’ll remind yourself to get back to it later but most assuredly not now, because there’s laundry to do and you really have to pee, or
4b.) You’ll slowly come to resent it as you walk past it day by day, this thing taking up space in your home and reminding you daily that you’re a Giver Upper and everything you touch turns to shit. Or…
4c.) You’ll settle into a kind of dull complacency in which this piece becomes a part of the scenery and you ignore it entirely, much like the inch-thick layer of dust that’s accumulated on every ceiling fan and baseboard in your bitch ass sorry excuse for a home.
OR!
5.) By the grace of some higher power you return to your work and get it to a state of “near completion.” You work it and work it and work it until:
5a.) It’s overworked. It’s a fucking mess. Dumpster it.
5b.) You contemplate finishing touches, and hang it on the wall so you can get a good look at it and figure out what it needs so you can return to it later (if this is what you’ve done, return to step 4).
That’s it. Questions? Don’t ask me, I don’t have a fucking clue. You’re welcome. Happy painting.
