Intricacies

I've noticed something about the way I make art... at least, the finish project of most of my works. For 2D works, they lack a lot of the intricacies that I've noticed in other 2D works. There's no believable background, no real sense of space to speak of. Objects and figures tend to have hard-edges somewhere if not all throughout, but there is usually some degree of modelling. I first really took notice of this when I had to write an artist statement this past semester for Business of Art, and looking at art made by folks around my age makes it even more obvious.
I guess it's just that a lot of what I know and how I percieve has been taken from illustrations. I can't think 3-dimensionally hardly at all (which is why I'm not a sculpture major), and it's like the only way that I know how to draw something is if it actually looks like a drawing or a painting, and not some illusionary space. Or it could just be that I'm lazy and I hate drawing perspectively.... which is totally true. I like to do rendering and all that of objects/people, but ask me to make a room and you'd be barking up the wrong tree. But as for intricacies, rather than backgrounds, I wish I were more patient in doing that sort of thing.
But the way I try to get around this issue I have with the third dimension is to do layering. This is a new avenue for me- so new that a lot of it is still up in my head. I wonder if that's really how we go through life anyway... layer by layer.. or if that's how we are as people. Layers that others need to go through to really get to know us. Perhaps some have more layers than others, but I would wager to say that we all have them.

Right now, there's this self-portrait painting I'm working on and right now I just hate it. Then again, I worked on it ONE day for about two hours, so I probably have good reason to hate it at the moment. It's not done, and I'm unsure of where I want to go with it. I had this idea of "Incompletion" to run with, but now that I've started going, I don't know what the next step is. Layers of some sort, I'm sure, but all I want is to gesso over it and start over. It's just so... soooo.. yuck right now. It's too boring of a pose, too boring of paint application... the fading paint seems to be too cliche. Sure it reveals a lot of texture in the gesso, but eh.
Then again, I started it with the idea that I just needed to get something out because I hadn't done anything since I graduated. I'll come back to it, hopefully soon. Maybe tonight before I go to bed, I don't know.
I probably just need to stop being afraid of going in and attacking it.