Apple 1

Apple 1, 6x6 oil on canvas.  Click to bid.

Whew!  I dont know about you but the holidays can sometimes feel a bit like a marathon at times!  I'm feeling like I just finished a race and I'm back in the locker room for decompression.  :)

I am putting the finishing touches on a painting I am doing for a Daniel Edmondson online painting workshop and will post it soon.  I have only taken 3 workshops (two of them were out of state and this one being online) and one of the biggest lessons I've learned is that painting is like handwriting.  We paint like we paint.  We can learn a great deal of helpful technical information to get us past difficulties but at the end of the day and away from the instructor, my paintings are a Lori Twiggs.  I see what I see and translate it as such.  That said, I'm learning how to use warm and cool colors to their advantage, light and shadow, hard and soft edges, composition...  and so forth.  I refer to my notes periodically for refreshers.  But, it's still a Lori Twiggs.  Fortunately, I'm okay with that.

The lesson now is being completely satisfied with NOT being Richard Schmid, David Leffel and a myriad of other high level painters that I've studied.  BUT I have learned a great deal from them and by comparing some of my earlier works to my more recent works, I believe I've been able to apply much of what I've learned and enhanced, albeit  improved, my painting.  See examples below:

The differences being a better use of all of the a fore mentioned issues.  At first glance the biggest differences I see here are composition (spacial), warms vs. cools and edge control.   I wonder if, in a couple of years, I'll be using my 'More Recent' painting here as an example of my 'Early Stuff'  that I will have then learned and grown from.   But until then I will continue to read my books and magazines, watch my DVD's and attend a workshop or two then wander to my studio for practical application.  I suppose only time will tell.