A girl in my illustration class once said with an air of pride that she was a perfectionist. I don't remember the exact situation that lead up to this, but I remember the reaction very clearly. Our professor let out a mocking laugh.

"A perfectionist? Don't fall into that trap."

His answer came as incredibly blunt. The class all looked a little perplexed at his words. Weren't we supposed to achieve perfection? Wasn't that our ultimate goal as illustrators? The hoary old professor took a look around the room and could see in our faces that we didn't get it. He seemed concerned. "I found perfection once," he started, spreading a mystery through the room immediately.

This grizzled old master had worked for Boeing in his early years. He began his career by making those old airplane illustrations we splendor over as relics of a time when great masters of illustration roamed the world with dinosaurs, before computers were around. The drawings were taken very literally. They were plans for the engineers and designers. The scale had to be drawn perfectly or something might go wrong in planning or construction. Every geometric detail had to be as exact as possible. Every tiny little seat in a 747 had to be drawn exactly to scale, with the perfect distance between them, and every little screw and bolt drawn in the chasis. Later, when he had mastered geometric forms and technical drawing, he joined a big illustration firm that had him doing lavish paintings for some of the biggest companies in the world. Corporations that would pay top dollar to conceal their sins behind giant murals depicting incredible beauty and splendor, or full page ads that spark the imagination and draw the mind into the page, wrapping their product around your very concept of what is good and right and American. The tones were perfect and the colors were exactly in line with theory. They looked just like they were drawn by Norman Rockwell and colored by N. C. Wyeth.

"It's a cold fish."

I was a little confused when he said it, but at the same time, I knew just what he meant. "It's a cold, lifeless, boring, fish. If you spend your whole life chasing perfection you'll end up an old man before you find something you actually like to do. So don't chase perfection. It's a cold fish at the end of a long line."

I wanted to spread his message to other artists and creative people. Perfection is a cold fish.