The sleep of reason produces monsters. - Francisco Goya

[T]here are no rules in painting and.. ..the oppression, or servile obligation, of making all study or follow the same path is a great impediment for the Young who profess this very difficult art that approaches the divine more than any other.

title of Goya's undated 80 etchings, 1808 - 1814; as quoted by Robert Hughes, in: Goya. Borzoi Book - Alfred Knopf, New York, 2003, p. 272

..As a matter of fact, last winter I was painting on ivory; I've already got a collection of forty studies, but these are original miniatures, of a kind I've never seen before, entirely done with the point of a brush, with details that are closer to the brushwork of Velásquez than to that of Mengs.