Unused preliminary sketches for the birthday pinup (Patreon)

I thought I'd post these two sketches because they kinda had a bunch of work put into them even though I didn't like the result enough. I started with the one on the left, and sorta liking the vibe but the presentation was very flat. I tried pushing the perspective some more but it didn't quite work right either. I think it's cause the pose says "hey happy birthday" but the eyes and face are kinda not sure what they're doing and it's not in an intentional way from the artist. So I just went started the third sketch which you see here and immediately liked the vibe a lot more. 

If I'm being honest about my own work is that I don't think I iterate enough. I do enough to get across the story I want but I don't push enough on any single idea to iterate to get a lot of different sketches to make the strongest version of the idea. I tend to go with my first instinct, and try and force that into working as well as I can.