Why Am I Like This

So far, so good. I'm not too big on the colors, but  this can easily be fixed.

Looks much better now. It's more soft and atmospheric and I love the colors because it is most faithful to the reference photo. This is by far the superior version.

It seemed like a good idea at the time. I kept going when I should have stopped. I do think this looks cool, but it bothers me how different it looks from the previous version. Not only does it look overworked, but the colors are muddy and it looks like an overexposed photograph. Hardly resembles the source photo in terms of colors (which was what made me fall for it to begin with)

It was at this point that I realized the battle was lost. 

It's just like with this artwork that got overworked to death. One thing I've started doing is saving milestones of progress. If I wanted to, I could go back to #2 and fine tune it again without all the weird changes I made.  Honestly, I might go back and do that. I really liked where it was headed and it hurts to see it go to waste if I give up here.