How To Fix A Painting That Feels Off

A painting can be technically solid and still feel wrong. That uneasy feeling is what we call a “redoo” moment: the point where you realize the color, balance, or overall design just isn’t working, and the smartest move is to redo the work instead of forcing it to pass.

We talk through a real art show scenario with a small table setup and a focused set of pieces for sale, then a conversation with a neighboring artist whose booth includes a box of paintings that were started, abandoned, or finished but never felt right. It’s a surprisingly common part of the creative process, especially for acrylic painters, but it applies just as much to watercolor and oil painting. Those “almost” canvases become a backlog for repainting, redesigning, and learning what your eye actually wants.

From there, we dig into the practical reasons paintings go off track: uneven composition balance, awkward color combinations, shading that collapses form, brushwork that fights the subject, or texture and palette knife marks that pull attention to the wrong place. We also break down the decision that saves time and stress: when a painting needs a full restart with a rebrushed canvas, and when you’re lucky enough to get away with simple touch ups.

If you’ve got a stack of problem paintings, this is your permission slip to treat them as progress. 

Subscribe, share this with an artist friend, and leave a review with your biggest “redoos” question so we can tackle it next.

Transcript

A Small Art Show Setup

The Neighbor’s Unfinished Paintings

Why Paintings Lose Balance

Redo Versus Simple Touch Ups

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Okay, so this video is going to be about redoos. And what I mean by that is if you're an art creator, you're a painter, you paint uh watercolors, you paint oils, or you paint acrylic paintings, what do you do uh when something happens to your painting and we've got a problem? And the interesting thing was I just did a recent show, uh, and it was a smaller venue, and I only had one table set up, and I was using my 20 by 16s and my 14 by 11s on the on the table. So that's what I that was the the paintings that I was currently selling. And uh the party next to me, and I and they had some very beautiful paintings, very different than what I do, and uh it they also used acrylic, uh, but it was more floral type arrangements, flowers and stuff, so very, very different than anything I do. And we were talking and they set up a nice booth and everything, and then they were they had this box of paintings, and I said, Oh, what are those? I said, Are those your extra paintings for today's show? And she said, No, actually, some of them, you know, are paintings that I started and I never completed them, or there were paintings that I did, and it just didn't turn out right. So I think eventually someday I'll redo them. And so a lot of times uh you get into this situation where you've painted something, and I don't care how good you are, you could be the best artist in the world, but you've painted something, and the color combination, the coloring, the shading, the brush work, the knife work, the texture, something is off. It doesn't look right, it doesn't look balanced. There's something in the painting that is not balanced properly. And um, and so uh uh uh I don't have any of those right now in my collection right now for redoos, but uh occasionally uh you know you you make a hundred paintings, you're gonna have a couple that that just don't look right to you, don't look perfect, don't look, and and you have to go in and recreate those and redesign those. And that's what you have to do. You have to start from someplace and then rebrush the canvas and start, or if you can, if you're lucky enough, you can touch it up like touch up work. Like if it only needs touch up work, you're in great shape then.