"Reservations" IS done

I applied my first coat of gloss varnish to Pinocchio, so I've decided that it's officially complete.

What can I say about it? I learned a lesson that I always seem to have to learn—that less is more. There were many more elements in this piece in the beginning than there are now. I don't think knowing that changes the way I would work. All of the elements I put down are still important to me on some level, and on some emotional level, they still exist for me. There was a lot of pushing and pulling of the winged creature on the left—also important, and definitely not a mistake. She was trying to figure out who she was. Adding the strings seemed to be really important.

Symbolically, what do we have? A wooden puppet who just wants to live a normal life and have the things we all take for granted. Like all of us, he seems to have an angel and a devil perched on either side of him—the never-ending battle. And he's got reservations—originally everyone did (there were more speech bubbles). We've all got them, though, don't we? I've got reservations—it's my nature. Now the axe... Still not quite sure about that, but he's offering it up. He's saying, "Here. Go ahead and take this axe. I'm made of wood."

And there you have it, another collage done. If you're at all interested, here are most of the steps that I made. I left some steps out because they were so small that most people wouldn't even notice. Funny how big that first step is from trashed-college painting to first application of Pinocchio. But you can see that I stuck with my first basic sketch.