day 6 of the big one, a 36x48 with this figure holding a phone at chest height. hands are usually fine for me but this one's foreshortened and the thumb has to read at like 3/4 scale or the whole pose goes slack.

painted it 11 times on scrap paper before touching the canvas. number one, the one i did fast before coffee, is the good one. the other ten are me trying to fix a problem the first one didn't have. i know this because i did it with a head last month and then a foot the month before that. i keep relearning it like a goldfish.

the annoying part is the 11th is genuinely overworked, the edge on the palm is muddy, and i'm probably going to paint it anyway because i've been staring at it for four hours and i've lost the ability to see it. that's the actual wall, not the hand. i can't tell if it's bad or if i'm just tired.

anyway if you have a trick for knowing when the first pass was right so you don't keep "improving" it into the ground, i'd take it. i don't have one. my trick is currently painting 10 more and then going back to number one, which is not a trick, it's just a tax.