Release It.
“Art is never finished, only abandoned.”
It is a phrase I have seen used dozens of times, often attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, but like many quotes I am suspect of its true origins.
The quote perfectly plays into an issue I see far too often with artists: the inability to finish a project. There seems to be a feeling that given enough time and effort it is possible to achieve perfection. The artist will toil away on a single work for years at a time making minor changes to a piece and never proclaiming it to be done. In many cases it seems as though the fact that the piece is incomplete is used as a protective shield; no criticism can be leveled against an incomplete work. As long as the piece is never finished it is easy to make excuses for any flaws in it. I have seen artists sit on the same piece for years and let new ideas wither while making almost no progress on the current piece. I have seen artists spend so much time on the fine details of a work that they lose the ability to see what was attractive about the piece in the first place.
In order to get past this there needs to be a point of acceptance where you realize that any further effort will achieve only very minor improvements. You have to be willing to admit that perfection is never possible and that you will gain more from working on new pieces than endlessly working on minor details of an existing work. Accept that this work is not the last one you will create and is just another part of the long process of your growth as an artist.
Learn to let go.
Release it.