Pushing Outside the Comfort Zone

I recently enjoyed an evening of oil painting with a teacher friend of mine - Mary-Leigh Doyle.  She is a wonderful painter and in particular I love her oils and her style of approaching them.  So this evening was for me an adventure in something fairly new and a relaxing evening of wine and paint - my favorite combination.  I have long wished that I could loosen up in my style as even when I start a painting out that way, I invariably end up with my nose less than a foot from the canvas working on tiny details.  So this evening the exercise was to copy a painting which gave me the "guide" to approach it in a loose and very painterly fashion.  I hated it.  Don't get me wrong, I love trees and feel compelled to paint them these days, but in this case the colors were not my favorites, and as I sat in my familiar 12 inches away from the tiny canvas it looked a mess.  I couldn't discern tree trunks from leaves, from background.  Only when someone insisted that I get the heck away from the thing - to step back and review - did I see what was going on in the painting.  OK....so it's not so bad.  What I do know is that to paint like this is completely foreign to me and it explains why I have such a difficult time getting there.

What you see here is unfinished - it's as far as I could go that evening without smudging it all into a muddy mess.  Once it dries I will add a few last minute touches...and try desperately not to add too much (any) detail.  Perhaps if there were an electric trigger rigged to the canvas that gave my ol' nose a little jolt when I get too close to it...