"Orange Spiral" --- Sold

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After my previous post, I received many comments, and most of people disagreed with me this time. How big the object is too big is a very subjective matter. Since I was attending Sherrie’s (and David’s) workshop, I did not want to do what I usually do. I really want to sense their way of judgment. Painting objects relatively small is part of the secrecy of the David Leffel style. David is painting the void. Using the subtle and smooth background and less occupied foreground, he sets up the boundary of the void to generate the effect of spaciousness. That is why David’s and Sherrie’s paintings have impacted us so strongly. So I don’t mind to create similar effect on my painting as well. Now, since we are talking about learning from the masters, I want to share some my experiences. At the class, I hardly taking any notes, but I pay a real attention to their demos. The masters communicate with you using visual language. So you need to listen with your eyes instead of your ears. The verbal part of their teaching is quite secondary to me. I hardly remember any their words. However, if you get a good result or some light bulbs start to blinking, make sure you document it verbally so you can remember better and organize the good effects into your own system. Moreover, if I may say some words to our beloved master artists who teach as well, I will say: Teaching is very left-brain process. To help the students to grow and also not mislead them, the teacher needs to do massive amount of work to translate the visual language into a verbal one, and present it in a systematic way. If there is a short of vocabulary, please create some. I heard Eskimos could identify many more kinds of snows than most of us. We artists should be able to describe many different kinds of grays verbally and pass them on to our students.