5 Tips for Still Life Painting - Paint a Better Still Life!

5 Tips for how to paint a better still life will help improve your still life painting! Painting a still life as a beginner painter can be difficult.

Especially when you are trying to make the painting realistic! I have written a collection of tips to help make this process easier!

There is also an assortment of videos on painting still lives from lemons to eggs and everything in between. You can check out those painting lessons on my acrylic painting for beginners YouTube channel

How to Paint a Lemon- watch this video to learn more: https://youtu.be/qdisde0rhRM — How to Paint a Lemon- watch this video to learn more: click here to watch!

Here Are Some Tips to Paint a Better Still Life:

It helps to have your still life set up and arranged in front of you to paint, alternatively you can paint from a colour photograph -however having a real still life like a bowl of fruit or a vase of flowers right there will allow you to see all the tiny details.
Map out your painting in a coloured stick of chalk. A still life is all about painting/drawing what you see. Draw your still life in a stick of chalk. If you make a mistake it will easily rub off -saving you paint and time! Using something like a pencil to draw on the canvas might still show through layers of paint and can be hard to erase.
Exaggerate the highlights and shadows! Shadows and highlights on an object is what makes it look three-dimensional in a painting. You have the creative freedom to express what you see and convince someone that what you are painting is life-like. So darken the shadows and brighten the highlights to make them pop and stand out! A way of doing this is shining a light from a lamp on your still life which will make it more obvious where the highlights and shadows are making it easier to paint!

Bird’s nest still life painting - watch how to paint the eggs- here!

4. Paint in the direction of your object. This sounds obvious but a lot of beginner painters make the mistake of painting all objects with long flat straight brushstrokes. This ends up making round objects like lemons, apples and vases look flat and lack having a form. I have created a great short YouTube video to help with this- click here!

5. Remember to paint in layers and take your time! You don’t need to finish your painting in one sitting, taking your time allows you to add more details which helps make the painting more realistic. If you don’t like something you can paint over it -this is why I love acrylic painting!