How to fix bad composition (and make art better!)

Let's face it: we all make terrible mistakes when we have a wonderful artistic idea, and we execute it poorly. There is also really nothing quite so depressing. Think about it- you have a painting, and it looks so cool in your head... but it just ... doesn't on paper (or wood, or canvas)

Behold, the easiest trick in the book- the crop!

For centuries, great masters have cropped paintings. Afterall, there is nothing worse than having too LITTLE room on the canvas, so why not guarantee that won't happen, and always have too much. Take, for example, my zepplin and flying whale painting below: it was a cool idea, but not the best execution (honestly, I didn't plan the painting as much as I should have- I got eager, jumped right in, and made some stupid errors.) Rather than trash the whole idea, I decided to save the zepplin, and make him the feature piece of a new work, and bench the flying whale for a new painting later on.

At this stage in the game, I made sure to do some sketches and plan my composition- when you're talking about cutting a canvas smaller, you are also talking about entertaining the possibility of having too little space... this means plan accordingly!

Original crop- noticed the colors were weak, so I painted a quick color study and mixing wheel (not pictured). This helped me decide on a darker background, and a blue-based balloon.

 After cropping the canvas with tape-off lines, I was reinvigorated to continue working on the piece, and began to make some changes. The spurred energy keeps you moving through the painting, but the distraction of the sides outside of the crop can assuredly create a wall to block your painting's success in your mind. In this case, the area to the right was a good place to try alternate sky color ideas, but EVENTUALLY, I knew I had to cut and stretch the canvas anew to see my product. 

As I suspected, the final product looked much better! Trust in the process; it has worked for hundreds of artists over the last few centuries, and will continue to work!