One of the choices made is in color selection. The traditional model would be the artist that uses only a handful of colors and if totally traditional, takes pigments and makes their own paints. They stick to the "classic" colors used by the masters and pay for only the finest quality. The contemporary model would be the artist getting the best "bang for the buck", and selecting whatever colors needed from less popular but high quality paint manufacturers and focusing on cheaper qualty modern pigments as well. I as you know love to chose from alot of options, and as such relish having all the reliable masters colors as well as some of the newer reliable contemporary colors too. (I'm big on your paint being reliable, so check these four posts when you can) So far as far as my own framed oil painting work, I freely combine the two and find it very fulfilling.

  Another choice artists make is their color mixing surface and their manner of holding a support in place to be painted on. The classic model would be a large wooden pallette, big easel and the need for only what we would consider today, a small amount of light. The contemporary would be a glass mixing surface with "daylight" bulbs and any array of small lightweight support to hold your work on. Again I would say I fall somewhere in the middle as I use two wooden pallettes on top of two lightweight plastic taborets and have put together my own easel to meet my needs with my framed oil paintings. I use a combination of lights in my studio and have found that most artists today see that they can do fine without natural northlight.