Re-tuning the brain

Self Portrait, Fairfield Porter

Pink house F P.

I spoke about Duane Keiser's class and how he had us return to basics.  I think we were all saying to ourselves, what do you mean, basics!  Here is how it went.
He set up a long rectangular table in the center of the room with our easels surrounding.  On the table were a lot on still life possibilities, fruit, tall bottles, saki jug, flowers, large and small, not arranged specifically for a person to choose and say I will do, so and so.  Our goal, after watching a  Fairfield Porter slide show, was to view the items and paint exactly what we saw.  We could choose short distance, long distance, the items were to be flatly painted.  We were to loosely put in shapes then work on some values.
Duane had prepared some gessoed paper and I have learned, Class=paint on the paper!  No masterpieces coming from class, just good training.

Approximately 12 x 16

The rough scraped out painting to the left gives you an idea of the separation and type of unconnected items on the table. The flowers in the right hand corner were from another bunch in a vase out of my sight. I added the apple shape to replace the wine bottles I had already painted- below.
The vase with the clematis is very close to me; the bottles toward the far edge of the blue tablecloth.  Everything is flat with no real dimension.  Tomorrow, I will tell how we blocked in; used a palette knife and paper towel as a paint brush.  Stay tuned!

about 6x7.