Choosing our strongest composition

In a perfect world, we would love all our paintings equally. However, I can tell you with absolute certainty, that will never be the case. As your skills develop and take shape, paintings or drawings you may have loved at one point in your hobby or career may end up being outright embarrassing to you months or years later. One of the strongest skills you can develop as a working illustrator or painter is learning when to scrap an idea or be able to objectively see the pros and cons of your work. There is a term called "the artist's curse," which is an idea that states that we will never be able to enjoy our art in the same way we enjoy the art of others. This stems from two primary places:

• We have been with our artwork since it was a blank canvas, so all we see are the "decisions" we made during the production of the work, instead of the work as a collective whole. We constantly harp on about what we "should have...