Dear gns, you said:
"On the idea of viewing the picture upside down or somehow abstracting it to help evaluate it... These things never made sense to me. If I can't tell whether the picture is working right-side-up, how am I supposed to tell if it's working upside down?"
Your question/approach is way too stringent and negative, the baby with the bathwater kind; sorry. Looking at a pic from multiple angles is not decisive on whether it works, it just helps in evaluating, seeing new perspectives, the liveliness or over-simplicity of it, etc.
Try it and you may loosen up and see more with the other side of the brain, the non-rational one. Please try it just as a game and it might strengthen your work, too.