Thinking About an Old Painting

  My Mom and I picked up a couple frames yesterday for some of my paintings and it's got me thinking.  One of the frames is for this painting below of our cat, Lily, who passed away over a year ago.  I did a little 7" X 5" portrait of her around 2012-2013.  I'm not entirely sure of when I painted it because I didn't sign it with the date in those days.  You can even see the early beginnings of my current signature, which is directly inspired by Bouguereau.
  The painting is small and not particularly well executed, but I really like it.  It captures the emotion of our cat as I remember her; maybe that's the reason why I like this painting.  It feels more sincere to me than some of my recent work.  I know I've been improving a lot lately, but I've decided to go back to basics with a lot of my techniques.  I always have to remind myself to go back to basics because I get caught up in technique.  
  I'm making some linen panels today and I'm going to do some paintings on them with a more basic medium and see how they turn out.  Stay tuned..