Two Things (leastwise before i've started writing)

I was reading some stuff on Norman Rockwell. He was talking about doing sketches and drawings before painting. He said he thought it was a good idea to work out the problems in a picture before you start painting. It is true that sometimes it is good to just start painting it is also true that it is not inherently good to fix your mistakes (I am speaking compositionally) while painting. This is exactly what is going on with the painting I started the other day. It is all out of wack and I am forcing it into place when perhaps it never needed to be mis aligned. I am effectively trying to wrestle it into submission, which is something that I maybe do not have to do with EVERY painting.

The other thing came up while trying to "fix" the painting. There came about a potentially interesting effect while I was wiping some paint off the canvas. What ever the result it was unintentional but one that might be useful in the future. This might well fall under the heading of "Owning your Mistakes". Can I use the effect to its best? Can I recreate it in a manner that I can use? The answer to both is maybe, hopefully I will try.I do feel somewhat stagnant with style and need to play more to develop my technique more than I need to buckle down. r.