After a long couple months dealing with my mother's death, I've started to put paint on canvas again. I decided to jump right in on a head study. I didn't take any process shots but this is about half finished and should show you how I go about painting. You can see the pencil sketch and the initial layers of paint. My goal was to force myself to be more loose and free with my painting, so I jumped right in without any tonal planning, correcting myself as I went along. It's the wrong way to paint, but it *did* force me to think and plan my brushstrokes.
I've always had a very slick style, tickling and stroking the paint until everything was blended and my brushstrokes were next to invisible. I would shoot colors into what was already on the canvas and blend it all out smooth. Lately I've been hating this style. I've been wanting my paintings to look like Repin, Manchess, Meseldzija, Duveneck, Loomis and countless others I'm forgetting. All of them apply paint in a controlled, loose way. Very thick and luscious. Your eye dances over their paintings and you forget to breathe. I'll never achieve their level of mastery, but that is my target.
I missed.
I intended this painting to look 'painterly'. Instead, I found myself reverting to my slick, blended 'style'. Every artist struggles to find their style, never thinking that it is always there waiting to come out when you aren't thinking about it. Style finds you when you're so engrossed in drawing that you forget to paint in a 'style'. Style is your instinct.
But what if your instinct isn't what you like? That's where I am. My instinctual style is blended. I desire it to be painterly. Should I force my style into what I want or should I relax and let it be what it is?
