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This 'Letters to Students' blog post is composed of replies I wrote to real people who were studying with me at the time. They have been lightly edited, mostly for clarity.

     I really enjoy your enthusiasm about painting and think it is great you're tackling a range of subject matter. To start with I'm going to address some of your questions:

1) on painting multiples of each set up-- I feel you would learn faster by changing things up some. It could be the same basic arrangement but at least different backgrounds or lighting to keep your eye fresh and to avoid automatically retracing steps you've made previously.

2) how to loosen up drawing and edges -- practice in seeing more accurately as far as shapes and values is the best exercise I know. A book I often recommend for improving drawing is the now classic Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards. That way of observing drawing as shapes is especially compatible with the discipline of seeing and comparing values. She also gives some great exercises in that book for proving to yourself how persistent the brain is at ignoring what's in front of us and pushing its own agenda.

3) You are correct I think, that most of the pigments Sargent used are not technically transparent, but particularly with the scraping and repainting, many areas of his paintings are relatively translucent compared to that of other painters. 

4) self taught artists -- In a sense, all of us who get to be very good at painting are self taught, and yet, nobody is completely self-taught and totally beyond the influence of other artists. My belief is this: what a good teacher will teach you is how to teach yourself. Most people do need instruction learning to see values and shapes and it can help the process go a lot faster. On the other hand, it's a cliche that many of the outstanding students in art school were content to stop their education at the door, often to never be heard from again. I've noticed that quite a few of the students with better seeing skills describe themselves as mostly self taught. I don't take this to mean they were born knowing everything already or managed to gain their knowledge in a total vacuum, but compared to those who are hoping gain their knowledge by abdicating the work to the teacher-- these folks who are trying to think things through on their own are at a big advantage! Skillful, original painting is always going to require some real effort and the sooner you give up on finding shortcuts, the better off you will be. 

This last part is going to address the black mirror and your comments on working from photos vs. life. Here is what I would say if you truly want get the most from this instruction: I do not say this as a traditional stick-in-the-mud who is forever suspicious of new ideas, but the most helpful thing is going to be for you to work more from life. Here is why: 1) cameras do not register things as our eyes do. The color in the very lightest and darkest values often is missing any subtlety and without experience working from life you will not be able to invent it successfully. Try photographing backlit trees during a sunset or catching the intense chromatic highlight coming thru colored glass and you will see what I'm talking about. Depending on the lens and how close you are to the subject, there can be significant distortion in the shapes as well. 2) Your black mirror will not work in the same way with a lit up screen or a photo. The screen is a light source itself and with a printed out photo the values have already been reduced or simplified to a basic black/white scale so the job of interpreting that has already been done. I suppose if you only intend to work from photos for the rest of your painting lifetime and don't care that artists like me can spot it, then that is your own personal choice to make. But that leads me to point #3 which is that I have never seen anyone get really good at painting from photos unless they had tons of experience working from life. While it is a difficult task to simplify what nature is doing directly in your vision, the nice thing is that you can totally trust what you are seeing and then decide how to interpret it the best you can given the limits of your materials. You won't have to keep reminding yourself--'Oh yeah, the color in that area isn't really accurate'-- and that allows you to really get in 'the zone' and put faith in what you're observing.

A final bit of advice-- that last thing about single-minded focus is really a key point. This seeing values and shapes business is so simple yet so elusive. However, once a person does establish the habit of that very careful concentrated effort they can then learn to apply those same skills of making comparisons to edges, composition and all other areas. The whole world becomes your teacher because then you can look at any painting done throughout history, break it down and then understand what the artist was doing. So as best you can, set aside any theories or distractions from the task at hand: learning to observe and simplify  by seeing from life. There will be more than enough time later to add more information and theories to continue your own education and eventually progress to painting in your own voice. Hope this helps!-- Laura