"I know I am not a great painter, but why does the way I view my paintings, while I am painting them, seem like I think I am?"
oh gosh, that made me laugh. It's the fumes! We all suffer from that. How else could we keep going?
Seriously though, I am finding that the longer I sit and stare at my paintings, the better they get. I have a chair set up across from my easel and will sit in it
a lot. It's far enough back that I can see the whole, but not so close that I am right into the paint...maybe 5 feet from the easel. The longer I sit and stare, the more mistakes I find. Then I can fix them. And inevitably, I will think Im done, then post a painting...and find that Im not.