Knowing when to quit

Every once in a while I manage to do two paintings in a day. And every once in a while it works out well; but most of the time, not. I've been sitting too long, staring too long, futzing too much to make both of them good. Occasionally it's the first one that's bad and the second one in which I get in the groove, but usually the second one is the one that suffers.

I decided to paint this girl sitting in a chair reading, inspired by the girl in a chair from this morning. Everything went wrong from the beginning, when I made her nose too long. Nose too long = face too big = head too big, and then I do the hands and body at the "right" size and she ends up looking...strange. Also, I could not get the eyes to track in this. I don't know if I shaped them wrong, put them at conflicting angles, or what, but no matter what I do she looks slightly cross-eyed. The only things I was happy with were the hair and that one hand.

Sometimes you just have to say, Okay, fail. And try again tomorrow.

"Pony-tail Reader"—pencil, watercolor, Uniball pen. Started out 9x12, got cropped to about 9x10 inches?