You make a painting that’s pretty nice. Then you make fifty crappy paintings as you iterate on the successful one. You’re working to improve upon that initial work, or move in a new direction with that idea. Maybe one of those fifty is itself successful, and you begin the process yet again. Fifty more paintings.
Those fifty paintings aren’t crap, they’re work. They’re movement. They aren’t going on a wall, but you must produce them to get to the one that will.