It’s a given that you’re not going to knock it out of the park with every painting.  Some of mine definitely make me go WOW, that really worked.  Some of them, however, are good….  not just pretty good, but good…….. but….. I can’t articulate it, but there’s just something missing…..

Here are a couple of examples:

This one made me go WOW (12×36)

This one (10×10) is definitely show-worthy, but it’s not as good as the big version; the smaller version didn’t work as well with all that detail, even tho’ I knocked a LOT of the detail back.  Here’s BEFORE I added the detail:

Here’s after I added the detail, went YUCK, and then painted over and muted alot of the detail:

Here’s a turtle where I just didn’t get the colors right – I finally glazed over the whole thing with Quinacradone Gold, and added some shadows between the platelets.  I’ll keep it, but it doesn’t have a WOW factor.

I don’t find this frustrating.  I know it happens to all artists.  I’m just kinda talking out loud, I guess………….