Art is Long, and Life is Short

I got to portrait class tonight. It was nice to get a chance to practice my current portrait methodology from life, though I'm not sure it shows particularly well. Just reinforcing the thought process is a good thing, though. I got the painting done in about two hours, and then pulled out my sketchbook and did some quick sketches from various positions around the room. Looking back, it would've made more sense to do these things in the opposite order - do some sketches first, then work on a painting fortified by the information gleaned from the sketches. Live and learn, I guess.

Talking to a friend in class, I was reminded of the old adage "Art is long and life is short", and can't help but feel like this applies here (it applies everywhere, really). There's always so much to learn, in art and in everything, and it's easy to beat yourself up for doing things in un-optimal ways, but at the end of everything it's really more about if the learning and improving made your short life more meaningful. So who cares if I should've done the painting and sketching in a different order to optimize on some dumb metrics bullshit. I had fun making portraits! And ultimately if things are fun, you're more likely to do more of them. Life is too short for silly optimization for the sake of optimization, and art is a long thing to commitment to.

-ZR