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129 mistakes
Afraid of darks: the darkest value is too light Rescue All edges equally hard, no lost-and-found edges Rescue Animal legs drawn from memory with wrong joints Partly Atmospheric depth missing: no value shift in distance Rescue Background painted last, covering edges messy Rescue Blending everything with a finger so edges vanish Rescue Blending fails: hard streaks and brush marks Rescue Blurry output from low canvas resolution Partly Bottles and vases lopsided: no centre axis Rescue Brick and tile texture drawn everywhere at equal strength Rescue Brushes too small leading to fussy detail Rescue Building cropped with a dead-centre horizon Rescue Buildings leaning with converging verticals gone wrong Rescue Canvas texture coming through glazes unevenly Rescue Cast shadows painted black and opaque Rescue Cauliflower blooms and backruns Rescue Charcoal fixed too heavily and gone shiny Partly Charcoal portrait smeared during work from top to bottom Rescue Clouds drawn as outlined cotton balls Rescue Colour drying lighter or darker than wet swatch Rescue Colour palette fights: unplanned mix of many chromas Rescue Colour picking everything from photos, producing a muddy composite Rescue Colour shifts darker as acrylic dries Rescue Colours muddy from over-brushing on a tacky layer Rescue Colours oversaturated, with too much on one layer Rescue Composition cut off at awkward places Partly Copying every detail of a reference without simplifying Rescue Cracking or peeling from thick paint on a slick surface Partly Cracking when painted too thickly Partly Cross hatching creating a grid-like texture instead of form Partly Dead eyes: no highlight, no eyelid shape Rescue Detail before structure: rendering an eye before the head is right Partly Distance not shifting cooler and lighter Rescue Drawing flat: no value range (everything mid grey) Rescue Drawing from a photo with copied distortions Partly Drawing the symbol of an eye instead of the shape you see Rescue Drawing too small on the page, crowded in a corner Rescue Dull, chalky colours from adding white gouache or too much water Partly Dust smudging and falling pastel Rescue Early layers pressed too hard leaving no tooth Partly Ears and nose not lining up Rescue Edges ragged where paper is wet by neighbouring paint Rescue Ellipses drawn pointed at the ends Rescue Eyes placed too high on the head Partly Face looks off but you cannot say why (unchecked symmetry and tilt) Partly Fat over lean violation leading to cracks Partly Feet pointing nowhere: no ground contact Rescue Figure floating with no cast shadow Rescue Figure grows: legs too short for the torso Start again Fixative darkening colours Partly Flat skin with no temperature change Rescue Flip-canvas check not used to spot proportion errors Rescue Forehead too short, hairline too low Rescue Framing wrongly: cropped or overmatted Rescue Fur drawn as outline scribbles instead of directional masses Partly Fur painted with hard strokes on wet layers Rescue Granulating or staining pigment lifting unpredictably Partly Greens that look the same: one tube green for all foliage Rescue Hair drawn as strands instead of a mass of light and shadow Rescue Hands drawn too small Rescue Hard dry edges where you wanted a soft blend Rescue Hard outlines in ink around every shape Partly Hard strokes never blended or layered Rescue Hatching that follows no form Partly Hatching too even: no value planning Rescue Head drawn too narrow or too round Rescue Highlights lost: no lifted lights with an eraser Rescue Highlights painted as pure white spots Rescue Horizon line cutting the picture in half Rescue Ink blobs and bleeding on the wrong paper Start again Landscape with no foreground, middle or background planes Rescue Leaving no white paper: lights painted over Partly Limbs drawn as sausage outlines with no overlap or foreshortening Rescue Local colour only: ignoring reflected light and temperature Rescue Mouth drawn as a flat line with teeth outlined one by one Partly Muddy colour from overmixing too many pigments Partly Muddy greys from overworking and over-blending Rescue Muddy mixes from too many colours on the palette Rescue Neck drawn as a tube stuck under the head Rescue Nose outlined instead of modelled with shadow shapes Rescue Not checking work in a mirror or at a distance Rescue Objects lined up like a shop display, all the same size Start again Objects without cast shadows sitting nowhere Rescue Opaque pigments chalking with white Rescue Outlines of equal weight and hardness everywhere Rescue Overuse of undo and zoom leading to lost proportions Rescue Overworking damp paper: lifting, scuffed surface Partly Overworking wet paint into mud Rescue Paint drying on the palette before you use it Rescue Painting on unprimed or absorbent canvas Start again Painting the next layer before the first is dry Partly Paper buckles because it is thin or unstretched Rescue Paper tearing or burnished by over-erasing Start again Paper too smooth and clogged with pigment Partly Pen lines drawn without a pencil construction, then corrected badly Partly Pencil lines showing and smeared under glazes Partly Plastic-looking, thick, skinned paint layers Partly Re-wetting layers lifting colour beneath Rescue Shapes all similar in size Rescue Shiny graphite sheen from heavy pressure Partly Skin in the lights overpainted white Rescue Skin looks chalky from heavy white pastel Partly Skin looks dead: no colour variation in the shadows Rescue Skin tones that look pink or grey Rescue Skin with airbrush look, no structure Rescue Sky painted with one flat blue Rescue Smudged, dirty paper from dragging the hand Rescue Smudging when ink is not dry Partly Stiff pose with no weight shift or line of action Partly Stopping too early because it looks fine in the phone photo Rescue Streaky flat areas that should be uniform Rescue Subject has no focal point Rescue Sunk-in patches: dull spots where oil sinks into the ground Rescue Table top tilting up like a wall Partly Tangents: edges kissing awkwardly Rescue Thick paint too early making corrections impossible Rescue Too many layers and details before the values work Rescue Too much medium: slippery, weak paint Rescue Trees drawn as lollipops: outline plus scribbled leaves Partly Two perspectives in one drawing (inconsistent vanishing points) Partly Uneven gloss after varnishing Rescue Using hard brushes everywhere Rescue Value structure collapses: everything mid-tone and chalky Rescue Varnishing too soon causes cloudiness Partly Washes too pale after drying Rescue Wet-in-wet sky with muddy horizon bleed Rescue Windows not shrinking with distance Rescue Wobbly lines from drawing too slowly Partly Wrong head to body ratio on pets Partly