How many fails

I totally fail all of the time. Lately I have been working on my watercolor skills and trying to paint something as a Christmas present. I have made loads of attempts to get what I have in my head onto the paper. Below are all of my sad failures.

What I have to remember about failure is, what I have written about before, that if it is a fail that means the work is not done yet. What I have to do is to innovate. Obviously my strategies that I have been using have not been working for me yet. This just means I have to keep trying new things.

I had a teacher in grade school that had a poster in her classroom that we did a lot of activities based on. It had a picture of an umbrella at the top. Below the picture was a series of ways to innovate something. One box had a picture of a branched umbrella that had one handle and several covers with at title called multiply. Another box had an image of an enormous umbrella that resembled more of a canopy with the label of scale up. Then a picture of a tiny umbrella that could easily be a drink umbrella with the title reduce. Last there was a picture of an umbrella attached to a jacket with the title of reinterpret.

These are all strategies that I like to use when I am having trouble trying to make my own work come together. Am I working too small, or too big? Should I add more, or take away from what I am doing? Answering these questions often leads to other fails, but at least I have tried that alley and have learned what options are not working for me. In stead of sitting there not knowing if some change would actually work out I can say that I have tried that angle and know for sure whether it worked or not.

If insanity is defined as someone who repeats the same actions over and over and expects different results, then this method should be the epitome of logic. If something isn't working them move onto a new strategy. No need to continue to bash yourself against the same wall over and over hoping that things will turn out differently this time.

Below are some of my fails. I have been working for weeks to try to get to the right method of work for this piece. I'm still not sure I have gotten to that point, but hopefully all of these fails will get me closer since I have eliminated many of the things that aren't working.