October 1, 2025 - It was a long time before I got comfortable with a painting not living up to the idea or picture in my head. It took a lot of training or ‘dirt time,’ as we used to call it, to get even close to matching my initial idea in pigment. There was a lot to learn and experience. But eventually the two started to get much closer, and this allowed me to understand not only that I was getting better, but how I was getting better. I used it to measure my skills. The closer it was to the image in my thoughts, the more confidence I built to be able to capture whatever image I wanted. But it still wasn’t exact. That’s because the real reason is far richer than I expected. I’ve researched a…