Should I or shouldn't I?

Greetings all!  It has been so nice to watch you all and listen to your stories.  I know I have been nonexistent in the SCA and the scribal community recently, but, well... I was tired.  Burned out and quite cranky.  This past week, a conversation about first scrolls rekindled my interest and unlocked my artist's block.  I have recently been spotted with two pieces in the works on my drawing table.  One suffered a bleeding ink disaster and will be restarted with the next gold project to take up the slack time of waiting on drying size, etc.  The other is humming along nicely.  Gold leaf laid well, design stenciled well, and now paint is laid on with detail forthcoming.  With that underway and making me happy, I find myself looking forward to the next project... and in doing so, took out and began flipping through all the pictures I yoinked from here and there that took my fancy and wanted to be tried.  In among those printouts I found a bit of perg, tucked away in a handful of folded photos.  It is the long lost original composition.

A long time ago when the earth was green and we were living in the Outlands for a time, an illumination laurel took an interest in one of my pieces on display at a competition.  We sat and chatted for a long time.  She had interesting observations about my work, along with many interesting suggestions.  The one that stuck with me, and indeed, was phrased as a challenge was that she thought it was time I started composing my own pieces instead of the copying and elaborating that I had been doing.  I was excited by the idea and decided to start with my all time favorite style... yeah... them Flemish things with the bits and bobs of plant and animal life that look like they had been recently set on the page.  I found images and examples of some of the native plant and insect life from the high deserts of New Mexico where I lived and composed them into a design.  A design I was then, and am still rather pleased with.  However... while the piece was in the works "things" happened and in a fit of depression I tore the piece in half.  When I came to my senses I picked up the pieces and devastated, tucked them away... I couldn't bear to start again, but yet I could not bear to throw them away.

Today I found them.  It is still something I am very pleased with.  The question is, and I put it to all you wonderful people out there, do you think I should restart this one and finish it?  Or... should I pick up that laurel's challenge with things more current to my surroundings?

Here's a piccie of the pieces...

From upper left, around clockwise are poppies, a flower I can no longer identify, blanket flowers, a red admiral butterfly, indian paint brushes buds from that unremembered flower, a queen butterfly, and poppies again...

Whatchya think?

Trin