Observation and Annoyance

This past fall, I replaced a car that I had owned for 17 years with a different brand of car. Not that long after I purchased the new brand of car, I started noticing this brand out of the corner of my eye everywhere. I am talking about the brand, not just my specific model. On their own, my eyes have figured out some of the unique features of this brand, my eyes zero in on these features, and my brain says "oh, yes, that vehicle is the same brand as yours". This has not been conscious on my part. Today at the gas station, it happened and as the SUV drove away, I looked at the back portion of the car and consciously looked for and saw the brand-specific similarities.

Eyes and their ability to see are pretty amazing. When I'm looking at a drawing or painting and my eyes immediately zero in on what is wrong, it doesn't always seem so amazing, but as I notice more and think about it, it makes more sense why this is happening.

That's today's observation, now for the annoyance.

This painting is annoying me. The left side of the face does not work. I struggled with the shape, values, colors, all of it. I'm rusty. I'm also trying to paint from a small tablet, rather than from color copies. The colors on the tablet are better, but source material is much smaller. These are the minor annoyances. The big annoyance is that I tried to fix the nose and mouth with gesso. The worst part is adding back the line that separates the top of the mouth which goes half-way up the nose. It looks awful and stands out, not in a good way. I need to remember to never do this again!

I could go back and fix the whole thing, but it's on paper so I'm just going to more on, instead.