Still Life
I thought still life would be boring. Boy, was I wrong!
“Probably one of the most important things a painter can have in their toolbox.”
Still life isn’t really a technique. It is a subject: an arrangement of objects that don’t move.
When I first decided to oil paint, I never imagined painting a bowl of fruit or a bouquet of flowers. In fact, I was dead set against it. It wasn’t what I thought painting was about. Why paint flowers? How boring!
Boy, was I wrong!
I came to see how still life teaches you to observe the fine detail of light and shadow, give objects depth, and capture their beauty so they seem to jump off the canvas.
In art class, we had many still-life workshops, rotating seats around the objects so we could paint the arrangements from different perspectives.
To this day, I use the techniques I learned: observing light and shadow, blending, and using a fan brush, to name a few.
Still life is a tool, and the more tools you have in your toolbox, the more pleasure you can find in painting.
Below is a quick practice painting.
Thank you,
Christopher Finkle
Stepping beyond my comfort zone also led me to life drawing. My first experience with oils began with Rainy Street.
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