Setting Up a Still Life
I’m now in upstate NY for the rest of the summer where I’ll be concentrating mostly on still life paintings, as well as work on a few landscape studies, sketches and paintings “alla prima”. I spent most of the time today looking through a friend’s still life objects and figuring out what objects/subject to tackle first. In the academy, we’ve mostly been working from the live model and even though the subject of composition is thoroughly discussed and analyzed by our instructors, setting up a still life is much more time consuming than I could ever have imagined. (I found out that Chardin would spend hours setting up his still life compositions).
After selecting and editing which objects to put in the composition, looking at some master still life painters and paintings, and doing A LOT of rearranging, I finally reached something simple enough yet interesting as a composition. Alas! now the light is gone and I will have to start tomorrow; but this allows me some time to gesso and prime some supports for subsequent paintings.
In my research, I learned a few things about how to set-up a still life.
- Pay attention to positive AND negative shapes
- Keep the composition balanced
- Do spend serious time and thought into setting up the objects; take as much time rearranging things around as you need
- It helps to look at still life paintings of old masters to get some ideas on how you can arrange things
- Paint subjects you are drawn to
I have also set up a still life for the evening in which the light source is artificial and controlled. I’ll post my poster studies for both and write about my next step in tomorrow’s entry.
