Hawthorne on Painting

I got out this book again. It is one of those that will never leave you without some new insight....
I have been teaching the Still Life in my weekly classes. I have some very new students and this is very new for them. We set up a simple still life, get out our view finders, and start painting. This is how you learn to SEE!
Excerpts from the book:
The painting of still life gives one the widest range for study--
a bottle is as serious a subject for the portraiture as a person. In arranging, place things so they have color and so that you can see it well. If you cannot decide on color and values in the beginning, move your still life around until you get things simple so that you can see big relations.
Select one light thing against a dark thing--a kitchen utensil and a lemon cut in half--try for spots coming together.
You don't hear me say much about drawing. It is because I think drawing the form, and painting, are better separated. The first thing is to learn to see color. You will draw better a year from now if you disregard for the time being the thing you call drawing. Realize that you haven't yet the painting point of view--after you have got the spots of true color in their proper relations, you have something to draw with and you can then consider it. Don't consciously try not to  draw but do the other thing so well that it will draw itself.
Don't look up at the nature and consider an inch at a time. See what one big spot is in relation to the other big spots.
Search always for more beautiful notes of color, don't search to put more things in.
Study larger spots of color coming together--don't break objects up into too many colors.
Establish big general things. You can't make all the differences you see.
Insist all the time on one spot being right relatively to another. I'm trying to say that when you think straight that thought alone is worth while and when you put down one or two notes that are right that's all that is necessary. You'd be surprised at how little work it takes to make a picture.

This is about a page. There is so much in this book - tons of information. Every time I read it I understand it on  a new level.
I find the above information very exciting. This is what we are striving to do in class, to SEE COLOR.. I learned a lot of this from Don Hatfield who is also teaching at the Capital Art Center in Sacramento.