My Pinterest account has about 200 boards, each with a healthy quantity of pins. One of these boards is “word of the day,” with 507 pins. I pin words I find intriguing in any language. The watercolor above is about the word ‘palinoia.’ Palinoia is “the compulsive repetition of an act, over and over, until the act is performed perfectly.” It comes from the Latin word palinodia, which means singing over and over again.
© 2024, Alma Hoffmann
When I saw the word it felt like it described me to perfection. I can spend hours doing something repeatedly until I feel tired or I’m reminded to eat, usually by my husband. In previous posts, I shared how obsessed I have been with a particular technique in watercolor painting. Recently, in a conversation with Ben Shamback, we discussed the illusion of perfection.
I take drawing tutorials from Ben because he is truly a master at it, and I, to put it simply, am not. I want to learn and better understand drawing because it improves my observational skills and lettering practice. In the tutorial sessions, we commonly engage in long conversations about the TV shows we are currently watching, the books we are reading, and the things I need to improve on in my drawings. He is a very kind and patient instructor, and I am very lucky to study under his tutelage.
This last week, I shared how obsessed I had become with watercolors during the summer. Something about watercolors holds my attention in a way that other paint mediums do not. Their transparency, lightness, and glow mesmerize me. Ink does the same thing. Works in ink, in the manner of De Kooning, speak to me.
Watercolors hold power over me, and I find myself searching for mastery and perfection. When I shared this fascination with Ben, I cited the work of a watercolor artist I have admired all this time. I mentioned how I wanted to attain such mastery that when I take up the brush, I can draw the shapes without pencil guides like the artist did with a particular flower.
In response, Ben shared his wisdom. I confess I felt I was being corrected. He said I saw someone who had painted that flower over a thousand times, and of course, her flower would look much more sophisticated than mine. Then he added, “It is, for example, my G’s compared to your G’s. Yours will be much better G’s than mine will be because you have done that G so many times.”
I have said the same thing to my students on many occasions. But I forgot that it also applies to me in whatever area I pursue. A student later commented on how good my letters looked on his practice sheet. Feeling his comment, I looked at him, smiled, and said, “You just need to practice patiently to attain a certain level of mastery.”
It is good for us to aspire to be like those we admire who have mastered a certain level of craft or skill. We all need a mark. But the truth is that these masters also have masters they aspire to be like. The road to mastery is palinoia: a relentless pursuit of mastery day in and day out.
The road to mastery is palinoia.
After sharing my obsession with the watercolor artist with Ben, I realized I had fallen prey to a common and familiar trap. I had suspended disbelief, and in my mesmerized state over her watercolor skills, I ignored how much time it must have taken her to do the flower that way—how I wanted to. Online videos flatten the process so you don’t see the bumps, the problem-solving, and the mistakes.
I often do a live vectorization of a sketch demo in my sophomore classes. There is no preparation beforehand. There are no prepped files to go from. I don’t even use my sketches. I ask them to give me a sketch they will not use, and I go through the process of vectorizing it live. Which means I have to look at their sketch and analyze it. The analysis is usually an assessment of the geometric shapes that are the foundation of said sketch. Their sketches are not done with geometry, though. The sketches could be a bat, a bird, a pot, an activity, or something else. The point is that these sketches do not reflect my visual understanding of a subject. I take out my tracing paper, do a simple geometric analysis, photograph the sketch, clean it up on the computer, place it in Illustrator, and start creating the symbol in front of the class live as I talk to them.
The students asked me why I didn’t record these and post them as videos in the online classroom. My answer was simple: the recordings would be too cleaned up because otherwise, they would be too long to watch. Then, they wouldn’t see me making mistakes to get to a version I am satisfied with. I want them to see me make mistakes, get a little frustrated, stumble on the tools to use, get lost in the interface, have my mouse not work, and so on.
The online tutorials must balance time and length because they differ from watching someone live doing it. It is easy to look the other way when a video like this takes too long. But it’s not that easy to look away when it is live.
Understandably, I am seeing a pristine recording of my artist’s watercolor flower. I must remember then that it takes a long time to do something with mastery and perfection. I need to be patient when engaging in palinoia.
Don’t we all?
Alma Hoffmann is a freelance designer, design educator, author of Sketching as Design Thinking, and editor at Smashing Magazine. This is an edited version of a post originally published on Temperamental amusing shenanigans, Alma’s Substack dedicated to design, life, and everything in between.
Imagery © 2024, Alma Hoffmann.
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