Jeremy M. Praay wrote:


> of depression.  I've shown my entry to some family and friends and I got 
> some encouraging words, but also things like, "What's that supposed to 
> be???" and, "I don't get it..."  I'm sure everyone gets that.  It's hard to 
> know if you should take someone's advice.
> 
No one answer to that in my experience.  There is the famous and 
mysterious effect of "putting it on the wall"  Merely putting a picture 
you have been working on, up in a public setting can make you see all 
sorts of things you never noticed before.  Also I know one successful 
artist who, when you visited his studio, was clearly listening very 
closely to your reactions, and seemed to be able to make use of that. 
For me the best, and fairly humorous observation came from and old high 
school friend that I had occassion to meet many years after we were out 
of school.  We were comparing the direction our lives had taken.  "Ah, 
artists," he said, "you go into their studio and you see a picture you 
like, but it's never the one they like.  It's always some dismal failure 
in their eyes."  He really nailed it.  That was always my exact 
experience.  You would invite someone into you studio and unerringly 
they would point to either, some studio dog, left unfinished and worked 
on half heartedly on rainy days, or some canvas barely started with just 
the underpainting blocked in. "I like that one :)"  Unerringly!