My Neck Hurts

Today I sat at my desk from 10 til 5:30 working on the same painting. I've been planning it for a few days and originally thought it could be my final poster but after today I'm not sure:

Successes:

• I'm so bloody chuffed with the top bit two thirds of this painting, I'd go as far as to say that its maybe some of the most technically good painting I've done. I really like the depth of all the different layers of leaves
• I also feel like I've worked really well with gouache in this piece, its got quite a colourful but not overcomplicated colour palette
• The composition of this I think has worked really well, considering yesterday I couldn't work out how I was going to make all the characters look like they were interacting with each other I think they make a lot more sense when positioned like this and it still gives them all their own space to exist

Failings:

• I really, really hate the bottom part of this image with the water and the lily pads, I think it throws the whole thing off balance and doesn't have nearly enough going on
• thats it, its really just this bit letting it down, I think tomorrow I'm going to take the image into photoshop and see if theres anyway I might be able to crop it down and not include the water at the bottom? and failing that I'll edit some of the fish I drew earlier this week into it to make it look more busy