A great painting is not the one which is perfect and neat. At school, normally, I was asked to do my work neatly and mistake free. I would have a bad grade if I made mistakes in class, exams, or presentation. I grew up to be a perfectionist who wants everything to works as I have planned.

There it came the day that I decided to learn how to draw. I always like drawing since I was kid. Therefore, as a perfectionist, I would like to learn the technique, so that I can draw perfectly the sketches and its dark-light-composition.

As I joined a Studio Gajahwong in Museum Affandi, I wasn’t taught any theories to draw. My teachers, the painters, simply gave me paper and chair to sit on. They asked me to look on a garden full of beautiful plants and flowers. They left me in the garden with some other students who already started drawing. They seemed like being drowned in their painting, while I was stunned looking into my plain white paper. I felt so clueless of where I should start and what I should draw. I felt so stupid. I tease myself in my head, “I graduated extraordinarily from the best university in the country, how come I couldn’t even start to decide how to do it?!” Thought I have a talent. Besides, drawing shouldn’t be that difficult, should it be?

Full of embarrassment, I told my teacher that I didn’t know what to do. He helped me to decide an object to draw. He told me that I have to be able to decide which things I should site. It’s nearly impossible to draw the whole huge garden in my paper. He also showed me that every object has a dark-and-bright side. I should be able to see those two differences in order to make my drawing more alive. The more gradations I notice, the better visualization of my painting will be.

I was doing well when accidentally I scratch my perfect drawing with my pencil! I got so panic that I made a small mistake which ruins the whole drawing. I would really like to erase it, but there’s no way I could erase it without causing damage to the other part of the drawing. I immediately told my teacher about this disaster!

Surprisingly, he told me that, “It is okey to make mistakes, sometime it is kind of selling point of a masterpiece! A beautiful innocent mistake might be a great contribution to the whole drawing.”

He took my pencil and showed me how to blend my accident-line into the drawing. He made some of it stronger in one part, connect it with another part, and leave it just like that. And well, I must say that my drawing looks amazing.

I have no idea whether it is me who is too cheesy, or Art indeed teach me how to see life. Art showed me that my ability is illustrated as a plain white paper. Among all great stuffs in the universe, I should decide objects and things that I could handle. Not being greedy to have it all in a limited capability, I might get to know things better by taking a closer attention to it. Trust me; you’ll be able to see a beauty of a parasite on a tree when you pay more attention on its shapes, colors, and how it makes the tree became a big part of a beautiful view to see.

Now that I already focus on my selected things to handle, it is also okey to make mistake. Most of the times, I hate myself of being an idiot who makes stupid mistakes in life. There were always a lot of “If” phrases in my head when I did a mistake. “I could do better, IF i. . . “, or, “How IF something like this, then it would. . . .” ,or “IF only I . . . .”, and so uncountable other “Ifs” in my head. After letting Art to become one of my teachers, I learn that a person should be able to forgive herself by revising the mistakes instead of erase it and cause more damage, nor ignore it at all. Next time I make accidental mistakes, I would take a look into my amazing drawing and say, “If this mistakes didn’t happen, there wouldn’t be an amazing drawing.”

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