When I leave a painting overnight all the thoughts about where I want my painting style to go in general come to confront me the next day. The desire to brighten my palette and create more lively paintings made me look at some fauvist paintings such as this Matisse.
Changes in direction half way through a painting often mean that the emphasis moves say from subtle modelling of form to more intense colour contrasts. I could have waited until this impulse subsided I supposed but instead I let myself get seduced by the colours and forms that began to emerge.
And I began to try out different combinations of colours and shapes that began to change the whole character of the painting. In my mind there is always a desire to see how far I can push a painting, and the more this progressed the more I could feel the urge to simplify and embolden my forms towards something more Philip Guston.
or maybe even go back to toning down the colours again like in a Morandi...
Another of my aims is to try and accept that my paintings will go off at a tangent and so maybe I will continue to let the painting develop into something new for me, and so this post may even have a part 3... or maybe not.
In the meanwhile keep looking at paintings you enjoy and let them influence how you approach your work. It may be confusing but, I think, learning from the best is the only way to really develop your style.