This is exhausting

Gonna vent a bit.

I've spent hours and hours on this since doing the initial sketch. It started as one of the things I posted yesterday, and, as you can clearly see, has changed completely and totally.

I started working on the sketch by going over lines, trying to keep the integrity of the original silhouette but still add detail and visual interest. As I go, I think I get hung up on details. So I start adding shadows or highlights to areas too early and things get lopsided or inconsistent. So, blessed with digital magic, I begin slowly going over everything, "Fixing" everything.

It takes tons of time and makes me angry. I realize that I should spend a lot of time on the illustration itself, making sure everything works, but I think that it's my original sketch that's weak. I need to spend more time on these things so when I get to adding more it's easy to see where to put the magic. 

Instead, I just go over stuff again and again, flipping the canvas horizontally over and over trying to make something work.

It probably just comes down to needing to work on the basics more, so that my starting point isn't in the negative numbers but at zero instead. 

It could be a million other things (such as starting details far too early instead of nailing the values and contrast). 

I suppose this is why I devote my time and soul to this- So I can learn.

Was it time wasted?

Now that I think about it, maybe it wasn't. If nothing else, I can start from zero tomorrow.

I'm gonna go decompress with my book and some fun sketching, have a nice day.

And you get a million bonus points if you can guess which of yesterday's images this started as.