When is it finished?

I was thinking about this the other day because l thought l was done! At least with the first part of the drawing. Until l took a photo! And what a disappointment that was! It certainly no longer looked finished!
This is my tip for today. Take a photo. Then really look at it. For some reason it seems that when you look at a photo you suddenly see what you could not see when the piece was in front of your eyes. Sometimes l will see that a shape is a little off, sometimes l will see that l need more contrast or darker colors or more highlights. Sometimes as in the photo below l will see that it needs more layers.

Even allowing for the different daylight (which as you can see has bleached out the paper slightly on the first shot) you can see a huge difference between the two pieces.
The first piece is nearly there, the second one has reached a point where l feel l can call it finished, or near enough.
As soon as l took that first photo l could see that my work was not popping off the page and therefore it was not finished.
The only difference between photo one and photo two here, is more layers. There is no extra detail, l just punched the colour home using a heavier pressure. And l kept on layering until that color popped off the page.
Of course in truth, there is always something more that we could do to a piece of work and we could work on one piece for the rest of our lives. But if it doesn’t look exciting and vibrant in a photo then it probably doesn’t in real life either.

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