The Evolution of This Thing

I've been slowly working on my STAC art project for about a week now. It's been an interesting process, and it's the first project I've even done where I completely changed everything.

The first day I got home with the canvas board I painted this in acrylic paint

I liked it at first. The idea of me as a slug creature really interested me, and I realized that one of my artistic issues is brains, because in the last STAC art piece i made I also focused on brains. What I liked about this piece was the face. It wasn't too detailed, but I liked the expression that I first got. I very much disliked the tail of the slug. I had it facing the wrong direction and it just looked weird. I knew I'd have to eventually do it over.

The next couple days I started to work on it more. 

Even though I did like the head and face, I didn't like the direction that it was facing, and once I started to look at it a lot, I thought it'd be better if the face were bigger. So, again with acrylic paint I tried to fix the face. I also worked on the tail a bit, trying to put it in a better place, but that was still not a success. I changed the color of the brain, but hated that. I stopped working on this because I got a bit frustrated, especially because the acrylic paint kept drying and wouldn't let me paint over the face the way i wanted to.

The next day I came back to the piece made big changes.

I painted the entire head and tail white. I painted the white in acrylic, and then waited for it to dry, and painted over the head and tail in oil paint. I made the head bigger and the tail look like a tail. I was satisfied with the face and the slug body so I stopped working for that day.

I didn't touch the piece for about four days, and came back to it today in STAC art.

I put in the grass and started to put some detail to the pond that I am running away from. I still need to paint the other slugs running away, and the creature that is eating us in the pond, but it looks a lot more finished. I also worked on the slug body a bit more, adding little slug arms and making parts of the body lighter.

Not a single thing from the original painting exists in this painting. I'm happy about that, I realize that working through fear is something that I'm pretty good at, not to say that I don't feel it, but I know how to just keep going. I know that I probably have avoided putting detail to the brain because of fear, but if I've gotten this far, making a brain shouldn't be so scary.  

UPDATE 5/27

I finished it!! I don't really love it, but I don't hate it either. I fell that if i had planned it better from the start it could have come out better, but I like it enough to be done and move on.