Will Warburton's sketchbook

[Ursula Dorada]

That piece is coming together nicely actually, I wouldnt give up on it too. Its a problem I have had myself - giving up on finished everything because I am not good enough. Like Hannes said, finishing stuff is an habit we need to develop. Polishing and painting are things we need to train too, even if we do it less than the bulk of studies.

Anyway, that most of the problem you're seeing you could have solved on the thumbnail phase.
A better value separation would really help too.

So I have two things to suggest here.
1) thumbnails; One of the things I did in Chris Oatley's class that was amazing was doing a crazy amount of thumbs, over 70, for the same piece. It takes a while, but once youre past the obvious ones, the nice ones start showing up. Another thing we did whas analyzing successful paintings in form of thumbs - doing a lot of those too. After a while you start developing a sense of what would work, what would not.

2) Value separation: do a couple movie screencap studies of low light scenes - you will see the contrast is much higher and that a lot is actually lost in shadows.

But even if you manage to finish this the way it is would be a nice portfolio piece to have around - you are going to replace it when your skills develop further.

And hohho I am always lurking <3