I got to spend 6 weeks in Civita Castellana during the summer of 2017 plein air painting and studying under Israel Hershberg in his master class. These are some of my favorite take aways from that time:

1. Avoid facts in favor of a large experience.

2. Measure while seeing the whole picture

3. The sky starts at the tip of your nose

4. Create a composite experience that is beyond reporting.

5. How is more important than what

6. Don't explain too much

7. You must be able to discern if any given mark or note makes either a light or shadow, we don't need to know what the thing is.

8. Run a make-up brush, sandpaper, or a razor blade across your painting to open it up again

9. Feelings must be contained by the intellect

10. In contemplating a motif: Don’t bleed… admire...

11. See the geometry of light

12. Satisfy yourself from the principles you're working out of, then stop

13. No amount of drawing can save you from bad color

14. Unnecessary pieces of a painting are malignant

15. Don't plop it down, weave it in

16. Make pure form that belongs to no time

17. Sentimentality is a failure of feeling

18. Get the mountain into the sky