Painting with Traditional Oils – Creating Still Life Paintings

Traditional Oil Still Life Paintings

The Beginning!! You can watch me progress. I created these paintings during the past 3 weeks. Really, oils out of tubes!!! Some paintings have turned out better than others – no surprise!! The first painting which you see was my first oil painting. I actually destroyed the canvas but kept this photo of it. Fortunately, I photograph various stages of a paintings development. This was a very early stage of the oil painting. I kept painting and painting until ultimately I ruined it. It was not worth the time to try to recover it – I just threw it out. I’m glad I had such an early lesson on the detriment of overworking a painting.

Above – My first oil painting

Lighting is one of the most important aspect of creating a still life, Having a few fun items to paint is important as well. Almost anything can be interesting if well lit. I have used both daylight and artificial light as a source in my still life paintings.

Orange and Pear Simple Still Life

I used daylight for the above painting of the orange and the pea abover.

I continue to enjoy lots of texture in my paintings, which I create allowing my brush to “dance” as I paint. Pretty fun. Most of these paintings are 8×10.