A good letter from the Mat

On the Welcome Mat group Styles we went here to see the amazing work of Scott Prior.

This compelled Gail to write this:

Yes, the quality of the light here is very compelling. I especially like his kitchen pictures (great colors), and the ones with bottles lined up with light playing through and off them. I would like to own the one of the bottles painted in the window sill at sunrise. Wanda, do you think; I think you do; that a hooker can get the feeling of seeing through and object like the bottles and seeing light and color beyond? Where on earth would I start? Have to do some hecka fine dyeing I think. Comments always welcome.

Here is what I said:

Yes Gail you know I do.... we are just so afraid of using soft edges and extremes in value we make it hard for ourselves. As part of my portrait class I show students portraits done with chewing gum on birch plywood. They are picture perfect. Our restraint comes from ourselves, not from our materials. Amazing eh?

You start by looking for shapes, then assigning colour specifics to it, right value, right saturation, temperature and colour though the specific colour is really the last thing on the list... It ain't in the dyeing, though it helps to have hundreds of colours on tap, the great thing is you don't need too much of any one thing, what fun! Make sure you create a fulsome stash!

Be a thorough and slow looker babe.... your sketching is teaching you to do just that.

Well done.