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Miztrali says: "Have you ever had to deal with you being frustrated at your work? I’m struggling to create gouache art but I always seemed like failing. Do you have any advice?"

Yes, if you look closely at the beginning stages of this painting (left image) you can see from abandoned starts that I tried twice to paint Greg—wearing a hat—at his workstation. But had to rub out both of those starts because he didn't stay there long enough.

By that point I was definitely getting frustrated. I face these kinds of frustrations in the course of doing most paintings. I feel unequal to the task, out of my depth, off-balance and slightly out of control.

Sometimes these frustrations come from things I can't control, such as when a sleeping dog that I'm sketching wakes up and walks off. All I can do is prepare for those frustrations, and adapt to them when they happen.

Other times I get frustrated because of my own technical failing, where something I should be able to control doesn't work the way I wanted. Avoiding technical failings is the reason for doing technical experiments in the studio first. If you do that, you can eliminate those potential challenges. Many times my experiments don't work the way I want them to, and I have to go back and try again. By experimenting you can get used to your materials and know what your paints will do in different circumstances.

Whether they're caused by things you can control or not, frustrating setbacks are just part of the creative process, something to embrace and even enjoy in a weird way. You have to be like a squirrel trying to get to a bird feeder.
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Watch the YouTube video of the painting of Greg at his workstation. The full tutorial "Color in Practice" is available at Gumroad as an HD download or lifetime streaming