I've hit that wall too. For me it was a series of fog shots along the parkway, three keepers that felt right, then I forced a fourth because I thought I needed more for a show and it just sat there dead on the card. When the push shows, the frame knows. Your instinct to shift the approach on that last one instead of repeating the vine was the right call.

Thank you for your comments, I feel less alone in having this impression that three is fine ... I will probably redo this kind of drawing after a break, or a few others in a different style.

What I like about your comments is that you take photographs and not paintings or drawings, which clearly shows that an artist's eye really has similarities regardless of their field of experience.

Thank you again.

That rhythm where three feels complete and four feels pushed, I recognize it. In the field I've noticed the same pattern with compositions. First frame is discovery, second is refinement, third locks it in. The fourth always felt like I was mining something already extracted.

The mosaic approach works without the vine in that last one because you'd already said what the vine says three times. Forcing it would've been decoration, not structure.