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Picture Perfect


When you begin work on a painting, you set out on a long difficult journey to the end. Begin by thinking, sketching out on the canvas a rough figure of what you want. It’s an easy task, you've barely begun—you can always erase, redraw, alter, or even start over.

Then comes the time for colours. And while there are hundreds and thousands of them to choose from, there are just a few, at times just one, that will be a perfect fit. Choices are tough to make—some may be right, others may go horribly wrong. Yet there’s no choice but to choose. After long toil and much sweat, you come up with the final piece.

Some paintings will inspire. They’ll be so beautiful that they’ll leave a mark in your heart and mind for ages to come. Some will be soothing, others will make you smile.
And then there will be those that will make you feel simply wasted. Pictures that will only speak to you of your incompetence and inability to make the right choices. Surprisingly, sometimes these may be the paintings you had loved the idea of when you started off. One of your more ambitious projects. And yet, the coloured canvas will tell a different story.



We all make friends in life. Over time, we start to attach ourselves to them, mould them into our lives and care for them. We open up to them—our secrets, our desires, our fears—it all begins to spill out. But sometimes we realise that maybe this isn’t what we want, or its simply not coming out fine.
The realisation may hit when we’re merely sketching—that’s when we can simply erase the lines off the paper and start afresh. It may leave a few marks behind, but then, those are easily covered by the beautiful hues of another painting that will be painted over it.

However what are we to do if the realisation hits only after the painting’s done with? If it hadn’t been coming out well for a long time, but since we were too much in love with our work to give up on it, we tended to carry on, stretch on, trying a different shade, a different technique, hoping that something, something will work? What if it doesn’t? A bad painting holds no worth for anyone—but even though it didn’t work out, it still may mean a lot to the painter.

Life’s like that. If there are pretty paintings, there are unsightly ones too. Successful friendships, and battered ones too. Perfection is not easy to come by. Unexpected things happen.

The beginnings are always easy, it’s the ends that are hard to survive.



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