Analyzing 'bad' paintings

Everyone who paints gets them. It doesn't matter how good you are as bad painting days are sure to come. Sometimes it's not feeling 100% in the mood, other times it's just poor choices, uninspiring reference pictures or just the loss of momentum as you progress. Maybe I'm speaking too broadly now and should just talk about what causes mine. Now you know.

I bought an art expert brand paper some days back. It's 300gsm but not cotton. I've painted a few nice paintings but of course, since it's not cotton, layering is a pain. I also have those hard edges and my colors are not vibrant. I wanted to see how far I could push it with a portrait today and in the end I wanted to conclude that I'd wasted my time, because of the results I got. However, I've chosen to view this misstep in different light.

Even in a bad painting, there are some interesting things to learn. For this one, I took the liberty to use colored pencils after painting and then markers as I've never done that before. I liked how the markers made the eyes look distinct. It's something I could incorporate into a next painting. I also realized that even though the markers are water soluble and advertised as some interesting substitute for watercolor, it doesn't give me the desired effect. It blurs out for some reason.

I think for this one, I could have stopped when I reached the layer below

You can see how poor the quality of paper is. I will not be using it except to maybe do color swatches.

I told myself, this still counts as a painting study and practice and as the goal is to get better with each practice, I know the time spent on this one counts for something. Experience and expertise in the bag still.

Early stages

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