Today, Noah picked up one of my compiled still life paintings. He said that my notions of color and light are very good and that in order to get more detail on my pieces, I just have to spend more time on them, enlarge the canvas and paint with a smaller brush, choosing my focus, of course. Also, he promised to make a demo on using imaginary objects and perspective on still lives, but I guess he forgot. I asked him a lot of questions regarding form flow and brush stroke direction, and he replied that there are two ways of brushing: one is going across the form (defining the minor axis of those forms) and along the form (defining the major axis). He also said that both techniques are better used together. Then, I asked him about Richard Schmidt`s Alla Prima book, where the author talks about saving your values and narrowing it down to pure comparison, without really worrying about the actual value of that you see, just the relationship. The book talks about using color instead of value to turn form, and I asked for a demonstration. Noah said that in order for that to work, one has to have a clear distinction between light and dark, and then work the transitions playing with the saturation of those colors and their conceived value. Finally, he recommended us to read James Gurney`s book Imaginary Realism, which I intend to download very, very soon.
