Vuja de is the opposite of Deja vu. It's when you've seen something a million times before and suddenly have the feeling of seeing it for the first time again. It's a prespective refresh, and it's what I'm endlessly chasing everytime I draw. The ability the throw away all of your associations, all of your biases when you look at your own work is an incredible advantage to have. As some of you may know, staring at the same thing for a long time makes you accustomed to it, you stop seeing the flaws but you might still feel like something is wrong. If you've ever erased an eye or a nose too many times to count because you couldn't get it right then you know how this feels.

To curb this effect and to achieve vuja de, I've been using one method that wasn't very practical. I would draw something half-way, then shelf it on my hard drive for months, even years, and revisit it at a later date. This definitely works, but it's not very advisable.

Recently I devised a new way to counter this problem, I don't let myself get accustomed to the picture I'm drawing by either drawing it fast enough or changing it fast enough that my brain doesn't have the chance to get acquainted with it. This is ideal either way because working fast is the goal for every artist.

There's also the sunk-cost fallacy to worry about. It's the idea that because you worked on something then changing it would be like undoing that work. I used to fall for this all the time, but now I see the more you change something you don't like the closer you'll get to something you do. Changing and iterating as fast as possible is the solution to both these problems.

Good luck with your pictures!