I was looking at an O'Keeffe book yesterday and trying to analyze some elements of her style, what makes an O'Keeffe look like one. Then I set out to do something in her style last night. I'm no expert on her, but the things I noticed and tried to follow were: cropping; asymmetry; boldness; curves; negative space; lack of detail on big color areas; and that each shape and even each little part of a shape, including shadow shapes, have an interesting "arabesque" (line that's never boring, repeated, or symmetrical).
One thing I didn't do, of course, that she did, was blow it up to an exaggerated size. Working alla prima, I had to stick to a manageable size.
It was a really interesting experiment--so different than the way I usually paint--and I plan on trying at least one more in this style.
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