How Many Versions of One Artwork Is Too Many?

(Asking for a friend. It is me.)

I love starting a series. It feels exciting. Everything is new. New shapes, new lines, new robots, new colours, new ways to make a tiny adjustment and call it intentional. The first piece lands and I am sure I have found something.

Then I start the second one and it is still fun. The third is okay. By the fourth or fifth my brain is already elsewhere.

I notice the details but I am also thinking of something completely different that has nothing to do with the series. Versions start multiplying not because the work needs it but because my attention keeps pinging from one small difference to the next. I tell myself I am still working, but really I am just keeping busy.

Too many versions is when the first piece was exciting and the rest are quietly boring. Too few versions is impossible to measure because I am already halfway through three other ideas. The original gets lost somewhere in the middle. And yet I keep going because it is a series and series need pieces and I like beginnings more than I like endings.

If you want to see how this looks in practice there are examples of my series elsewhere on this site. Completing the alphabet robots was one of the hardest to do and I'm proud of myself for completing 26 pieces of art for one series!