Re-spray jobs

I wonder how many times one can paint over an acrylic before the surface becomes unmanageable.....  I'm about to find out; unhappy with several recent acrylics, I'm reaching for the "gesso" again; not something one can safely do with oils, but then I've rarely felt quite the same need to obliterate previous work in oil. I don't know if this will help anyone or not, but I have discovered a fault in myself (no, not that one: that one requires extensive psychiatric counselling, and possibly a spell in a secure institution) - rather, a fault in approaching paintings consequent upon my finding it easier to sit down to them, and to get too close to the canvas: objects get to be too big, depth is lost, perspective is distorted - not the way lines go, or even the way colours recede, but the deeper sense of perspective that makes a painting either succeed or fail - the conceptual grasp; so that the term "in your face" applies.  Big objects, hitting one in the eye - smaller objects diminished.   Now and then, that's acceptable - but when it becomes a visual, compositional habit, I get into trouble.  Standing back - that's what I need to do: not just back from the scene itself, but from the canvas.  Elementary advice, but if I've forgotten it after some 50-plus years, I'm presuming anybody can.  Well - advice to myself and to you: DON'T!

Yes, I'm familar with THAT too - and with painting a head (i.e. a portrait attempt) with blissful disregard for its position on the canvas: there it sits, now - what does it sit against?  One of those questions you need to ask BEFORE you start painting, not afterwards.  Then there's the problem of thinking you know what you want to paint, you have it fixed in your mind, but you're away from the scene: you get the framework down, and realize you've got a big space with nothing interesting in it - because your (i.e. MY) imagination didn't fill that bit in ...  Plus (there's no end to this once  I get going!) painting a picture like a stage set - fine if you know what you're doing (the late Murray Ince did a video on this; can't find it right now - he did paint actual stage sets at one point) but not so fine if you blunder into doing it by accident.  Nearly always, these mistakes happen for one or two out of several reasons: you're too near the canvas, because you're sitting down to paint, and forgetting to get up and stand back now and then; you don't have the foreground depth, it's as if you're right up against the tree, or cliff, or whatever it is; you have too many big objects far too near to you - probably you'd get away with one dominant feature, but not with several, all praying for attention.   If you can stand up to paint, stand at a long brush distance from your painting, or at least stand back from it as far as you can, and retreat further to take a squint-eyed view, it usually pays off.  What intrigues me is that knowing that, I still make obvious mistakes - I do have limited room for manouevre here, but that's no excuse!