The Art of Painting, produced by Liliedahl Video Productions, is the best art DVD featuring David Leffel that is currently available. One of the first things to point out about this DVD is that, unlike other Leffel still life demonstrations, David develops a level of finish in the painting which illustrates many of his signature characteristics. The DVD presentation consists of David painting while casually talking about painting and taking questions from an audience.
In The Art of Painting David talks about two approaches when learning to paint. One is getting the painting to look like the object(s) that are in front of you. The other involves gaining a sense for the “paint quality,” how the paint handles, laying down each stroke, gaining a feel for the paint in terms of what it looks and feels like so you are able to control it. He recommends focusing on the paint, first, and secondarily trying to make the image look like your subject. This is not to suggest one is to be neglected or prioritized. Instead he is suggesting that the feel for the paint is something that one should remain aware of while developing a likeness of the subject matter.

David advocates defining what you want before you begin rather than winging it and going with the flow hoping you can find something somewhere in the process. Having the finished idea in mind as you work leads you to a successful painting whereas making it up on the fly leaves you open to multiple opportunities for failure. “If you do not know where you are going, you usually wind up someplace else.”

“Painting is a series of relationships.” ...........thick and thin paint, hard edges and soft edges, color against colorlessness, foreground and background. You need something to establish one thing over another aesthetically and in terms of the picture plane. So the most important thing in achieving a successful painting is determining where you are going which includes what you ultimately want the viewer to look at and what you want them to ignore. "You are conducting the painting" getting people to view it the way you want them to.

David’s palette is fairly simple. Initially there is an overhead shot with text describing each paint daub around the palette. Once David begins painting the text follows his brush creating a sort of mathematical equation describing the mixture but this is abandoned early and we only see the palette activity without text descriptions for the majority of the demonstration. It is still easy enough to follow the colors used in mixtures. David’s palette remains organized and he does not allow things to become a mess.