Who likes painting still-life paintings? Here is one for you that you may want to check out… 

Oil painting by Ada Fagan:

 

To tell the truth:

Still-life paintings aren’t my thing. I like doing wild life scenes. Like flowers growing naturally in a field, with weeds and all. To see the flowers blowing in the breeze, gives one a feeling of freedom and happiness. 

But if you do, do still-life set ups:

Still-life paintings can look pretty stiff and unnatural. So one has to be careful how you set them up. Be careful of what items you put together, etc. 

• First, the size of the painting: Put fewer items in the composition, on small canvases.
•  Try to put the same theme of things together. In this case it was a ceramic vase I had made. And the tea cup had the same pretty pink of the flowers. 
• If you have light coloured flowers, use a dark background. And visa-versa if you have dark flowers. 
• · Put less detail in the background, so that the main point of interest, that is the flowers, stand out. 
• You need the flowers to set comfortably in the scene. You don’t want the scene to look stiff. So watch contour edges of the flowers, that they aren’t too sharp. Blur some of the outer edges of the posy, here and there. And put a little of the flower’s colour into the background. 
• Use contrast of colour, where possible, to make the painting sing. And choose one or two flowers to be your vocal point and where possible put contrast of tone and colour in them. 

Is there anything you would like to add to that?

Do you like posy flower setups, or do you like to see flowers to grow wild and free in paintings? 

And what else do you think is important, when composing still-life paintings of flowers?