The National Portrait Gallery in London

I'm planning some new paintings for when I get back to the USA and I'm on the last leg of my trip to the UK and Europe. 

I've decided to only visit galleries where I can truly learn stuff to improve the work I'm planning.  

I went to the National Portrait Gallery and saw the Freud show and I  focused mainly on the modern collection.  

I love Freud, and the retrospective showed a diverse use of techniques, subjects, and formal elements such as in his early work where he plays with contour, outline, drawing, and texture.  He finally evolves into his naked his portraits and especially his naked portraits.  Then he is pretty static.  He's developed his method, color, texture, brushwork, with some almost minor deviations in compositions and subjects.  However, he's still the gold standard for me and a major hero.

Walking through the collection I'm seeing that a lot of artists treat the entire surface with the same color, texture, and brushwork with minor departures,  even Freud, but he's not the only one.  

There almost seems to be an unimaginative focus for almost all the artists that once they have a technique, which is usually based on Freud or Alice Neel, they stick to what they know.  No stretching or experiment beyond that.

I suppose David Hockney, is someone who experiments and changes the most over time.  Although, by 19th century standards, he lacks some facility, but I'm out of my league to criticize him.  There were two paintings of his that I most remember. 

The majority of the artists place the figure symmetrical without environments.  Although they use distortion, it seems to emulate either Freud's, or Alice Neel's work.  Like an artistic convention or standard that they can't avoid.  

When I've asked for critiques one of the things that's come up is that I could do more than I do with distortion and or exaggeration, but I think I will be as precise in my anatomy with small, intentional tweaks rather than those big Alice Neel or Freud like qualities.  

I have a bunch of things that I've been thinking about for variations in surface, finish, texture, and placing the figures in meaningful environments with things like shoes, mirrors, lamps, take out containers, bowls of cereal and a pendent figure.

I can't wait to get home and back to my studio to experiment.