Styles

One of the first female artists I learned about as a kid was Georgia O'Keefe. The huge closeups she did of flowers was awe-inspiring. I'm not a big fan of her more abstract or skull art but I do love her flowers. So, of course, I always wanted to do one but lacked the skill and the ability to overcome the fear of failing at it.

Recently one of my art students was talking to me about a project she had in mind with a friend of hers to do a close up of a magnolia, so that set me to dreaming again. Then the yahoo group posted this sweet hibiscus as the August challenge.

My camera went nuts on all those reds and blues and purples in it. So the photo is not as good as I wanted and the scanner was even crazier. But I've finally achieved half of my Georgia O'Keefe goal. I painted the close up, now I need to paint a really big close up.

But now on to styles of painting. Sometimes I copy a "master" because I've loved something they've done. It's an excellent method of learning. But I want to caution any artist reading this, learn the lesson and move on to discovering and developing your own style. It's better to let Richard McKinley paint Richard McKinley paintings and better to let Thomas Kinkaid paint Thomas Kinkaid paintings. Why? Because you probably don't want someone to look at your painting and say, "that looks just like a Thomas Kinkaid painting." Personally, I want someone to look at my paintings and say, "That looks just like a Kate McCullough painting."