So I brought a piece to my local group on Saturday, 16x20 acrylic, marsh grass at low tide with a strip of water in the back. I was actually happy with it, which is rare for me.

One of the women there (she's mostly watercolor, does lovely work) said the whole thing sits flat because my grass in the foreground is the same level of detail as the grass way in the back. I'd never thought about it that way. I just painted what I saw, which is that marsh grass looks like marsh grass everywhere.

Spent Sunday night going back through my reference photos and, ok, she's not wrong exactly. My close grass is a little crisper but not much. Thing is I don't know if I want to start sharpening foreground blades because I've seen paintings where that gets fussy fast and looks like a photo someone traced.

Anyone else run into this? I don't want to spend my one free evening a week redoing a painting that maybe is fine.