When I first read this in The Art Spirit years ago, it was a bit daunting to me. However, over the years, I have taken it to heart and have filled my sketch books with drawings done from memory. I may start a sketch from life but inevitably the person will walk away. At this point, I try to finish my sketch from what I know. I also do this when I am adding figures to my paintings. Instead of taking my camera out, I just put my brush down and try to draw the figure in my head and then pick up my brush and put the figure in my painting. The more I use my drawing and painting memory, the better it gets. You also get  figures that have life in them and they fit into the plein air painting. The figure should be put in like everything else in the painting. It should be painted efficiently with only the necessary brush strokes to indicate accurate proportion  and movement, but not so tight that you can peel it off of the canvas. A good example of this is "Morning Stroll". My husband calls the dog "Spot" because that is all it is but you know it is a dog. The figure has a few accurate brush strokes. It is not the amount of detail but the accuracy of the detail that is important.

Here is a gray day landscape study. 

When I have been asked how I am able to get the light effects, I quote Charles Hawthorne (Hawthorne on Painting), "It is beautifully simple, painting — all we have to do is to get the color notes in their proper relation." 

This is what I try to do — decide which color note I can see most clearly, put that first color note down quickly, and then that note becomes the key to my whole painting because everything else is related to it. 

The sky is the lightest and warmest in this scene so I started the color of the sky near the horizon with a warm pink -- slightly lighter in value than the cooler and darker top part of the sky. The warmth in the foreground brings the grass forward. The water was seen as warmer than the top part of the sky.

Do you want to get advance notice of the book publication? Sign up for my e-mail list.

It was a rainy day, so I did this demonstration for my Monday class in the studio under artificial light. I overstated the warmth of the light planes and then eventually added color to them to bring them closer to the actual color of the objects. I also started seeing the transition colors from the shadow to the light on each object.  In Step One, please note that I started the blue cloth in light with a warm color, and eventually added blue to it. I couldn't start with a blue because I chose that color for the white bowl in shadow.