"Wisteria"

"Wisteria" is finished. You know there's a saying, "art is never finished, rather it is abandoned" ... or something like that? This was the closest to that saying I've ever come. Usually, when I start a picture, I have an image in my mind that I'm going after, and I'll just go for it the best I can. This time though, I wasn't sure whether I liked the way it was looking at all. After 2 days of working on it though, I honestly got tired of looking at it and also disappointed a little at my inability to make myself happy with it. I decided to leave it.

Most of my paintings do not shrink well at all because I put a lot of details and they don't show. Also, the subtle shadings get obliterated by some of the highlights when an image is shrunken down. White (or light color) part of the image gets 'overrepresented' in a thumbnail version or anything smaller than 500 pixels across... *sigh* This is too bad since I like the way it looks at full size just fine. It only gives me this "Ugh..." feeling when I looked at smaller versions of it, like people would see it here.

I was really liking the way I was painting starting with the "Stardancer" and really felt good about "Lady of Compassion", and I was really pleased with the "Along Came a Spider". I felt as if I was onto something. But I've had this weird, nagging feeling since "The Ruby Slipper" -- I am not really liking what I'm producing at the moment. Not truly happy, deep down. It might be that these last two pieces didn't mean nearly as much personally as "Lady of Compassion" or "Along ...". Or it could be that I'm vaguely feeling the need to study somehow. I know I am picking on the last two pieces in my head like crazy...

It surely didn't help with this nagging feeling of dissatisfaction when multiple people complimented me on this image with reference to CLAMP. Everyone had different reasons, but, no ... that type of comments don't make me feel good about what I'm doing (or trying to do) at all. *facepalm* At least, it's better to be classified as manga-style and associated with a certain mangaka than having someone call or categorize my work 'anime'...

In the end though, it is a kiriban request/gift. No need to go insane taking apart a gift art.