How To Paint Your Own Still Life

The first thing in painting a still life is setting it up. Gather objects that you find interesting or meaningful and arrange them on a table with good lighting so there are highlights and shadows.


These are the tools you will need to get started. A canvas of your choice, brushes, a view finder, a neutral colored card with a hole, and an angle finder. The view finder is to look through to get a better picture of where the objects hit on the edge of the canvas. The card with a hole in it is for when you are having trouble distinguishing a specific color, while looking at the color through the hole of the neutral card sometimes helps you see the color you are tring to match.

Gessoing the canvas first makes it easier to paint on and at the same time gives it texture.


Then take a mixture of paint and mineral spirits and give the entire canvas a light tint

Now we can actually start putting something on the canvas. Take a brush with diluted paint and start blocking in masses and don't forget to use the view finder. Blocking in general shapes and not obvious objects helps you place everything on the canvas with out committing to something, you can easily erase it with an extra clean dry brush.