When I was a kid, we were told in class to draw our hands.
I pressed mine against the paper and traced the edges. Direct, no fuss.
The teacher frowned, said, “That’s cheating.”
I tried again. No template this time.
The result? A mess of shaky lines.
I stared at it, and a thought lodged itself into my head:
If the template works better, why not use it?
Years passed, and the question stuck.
Then came the voices:
“Photos are cheating. Real artists paint from life”.
Grids? Projections? —“Oh boy. That’s not real art”.
But one day, I asked Sean Cheetham—A painter so good he could work blindfolded.
I asked him what he thought.
He didn’t flinch.
“Use what works. Photoshop, grids, projections—whatever makes the painting better. Cheat. CHEAT ALL YOU WANT.”
And then he said something I’ll never forget:
“Giving up your best tools is just ego. That’s not what Art’s about.”
He was so damn right.
This isn’t a test of endurance. You’re not on America’s Got Talent.
Art isn’t about tying one hand behind your back.
Art isn’t about proving you’re virtuous.
It’s about saying something.
Take the purist mentality to its extreme—
Would you give up good brushes?
Decent pigments?
Electricity in your studio?
The obsession with merit doesn’t create meaning.
It just reeks of desperation for applause.
What matters is what you’re trying to say, not how you get there.
So now I look back at that template from my childhood,
when honesty was enough.
Maybe it wasn’t cheating at all.
Maybe that’s what being an artist really is.
We knew it then, and we lost it.
Maybe tracing my hand was the most honest way to show what I wanted.
Maybe what’s actually a trick is believing there’s one “right” way to create.
No one’s going to tell you this in art school. They can’t afford to.
But if there’s something holding you back,
If there’s something purism won’t let you touch,
This is the place for you:
P.S. — Spots are limited. Yeah, this is the part where I tell you to click and grab your spot before it’s gone 🫶☝️
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