Developing Personal Style

I've been doing a lot of reading about technique and developing personal style lately and have found a few favorites which I've read again and again. Namely, "Painting with Your Artist's Brain" by Carl Purcell (check out his work here: http://www.carlpurcell.com/) and "How to Make a Watercolor Paint Itself" by Nita Engle (http://www.galleryone.com/engle_prints.htm). There's also a TV show I watch every weekend featuring Charles Evans who is a very popular painter in the UK. He's very Bob Ross like!

The one thing I have realized in my research is that it just doesn't work to say to yourself, "I like how he paints evergreen trees, I'm going to do mine that way. Believe me, I've tried. Sometimes the end result looks ok, but you just know it doesn't look like your work. Foliage is interesting to me and something that I'm always convinced doesn't look right in my paintings! And with maybe 20 ways to show texture on foliage, how do you know which is right for you? The answer is trial and error. In the past 3 months, I've created a stack of painting on the floor or my studio in the "this needs work" pile. Sometimes I pull one out and go back and try to make changes, but if it's something fundamentally wrong, like the composition, you can't just pick it up and put it on the other side of the picture. So in doing this, I have managed to narrow down my techniques into a short concise list of how I tackle different subjects. It's very easy to start to feel lost and like you're losing control in a painting and so I have this all written a a sheet of paper and taped right above my desk, so when i get stuck, the answers are right in front of me! So here's what works for me:
My Method
Texture: Splatter, salt, dry brush, masking
Water: Reflections painted first. Big washes over the whole thing after the first part's dried, then lift out lights and add darks. My goal is to have this done in 5 minutes or less.
Rocks: Washes, Mask hard edges of surfaces.
Bricks (up close)- Initial Wash, Mask "in between" bricks, then additional washes and salt or splattered water.
Foliage: (mid distance) Foliage with #8 Round brush, Vary colors to show depths and highlights.
Flowers: Each Petal Painted separately, wet on wet
Grass: Rigger brush to define blades within washes.

I'm hoping to finish another picture before we leave for California on Thursday, so check back then and see if I made the deadline! The painting I am currently working on is of a flower stand in Paris. Back to work!