Golden and Red Apples in Oil

Recently painted these two little apples. Oil paint on 5 x 7" canvas panel. I'm starting to get a little more comfortable with oils, not feeling as clumsy and awkward. These were painted from life in my kitchen. Lately I've been focusing a little more on my illustration, which I haven't been posting here. For some reason I feel the need to keep my illustration work separate from my daily art studies. I don't know why. Maybe I'll work on merging them so I can keep everything all in one place.

I feel this constant pull back and forth, trying to decide whether I'd like to continue on with more traditional art, or move towards doing work that is more stylized and conceptual. Honestly, the traditional work feels more natural to me, it's my comfort zone because I can copy what I see and not try to pull all these jumbled images out of my head to try to put it onto paper. It's cozy and warm and doesn't make me feel like gouging my eyes out with my hard end of my paintbrush.

I think I'm in a point where I'm feeling pressured by not "having a style." I need to just chill out, try to listen to my heart and paint what brings me joy, instead of setting all these expectations and comparing my work to illustrators I greatly admire and wishing I could do that. Having a bit of an artist existential crisis here. But who isn't? ;P

Another thing I've been thinking about getting into is urban sketching. I'm a bit shy to actually sketch in public right now, but the idea of adventuring and taking photos of cool places for me to draw gives me a spark of joy. So maybe I will do that.