Still Life

 Motion in Still Life


It's been not quite so cold this winter in Tehran, yet it's surely cold enough to discourage landscape artists from venturing out. So I thought I'd better do a few still life pieces as a color mixing warm-up that would hopefully lead to some large-scale figurative work. But I guess I'm sort of hooked. Just cant stop doing it! I've been experimenting with fruits and vases, and I think my next set-ups will probably include more unorthodox items such as dolls, shears, vegetables, etc.


Technically the greatest challenge, so far, has been the lighting: My condo is south-lit which means I have to blind the windows to block direct sunlight. Since the blinds are not thick enough, I usually stick aluminum papers on the panes to get something close to a north-lit studio. Next I cut a hole in the aluminum to let in a dramatic shaft of light over the set-up. The only catch is that there might not be sufficient light over your working area. But that's the price you pay for loving to paint with purely natural light. It does nit mean, though, that an artificial light source does not give in well to still life set-ups. Qiang Huang' paintings are mostly done with artificial lights, and the result is amazing.

Bringing out life and vitality in a still life is the hardest part, and one has to be specifically careful with that aspect, or the painting is very likely to turn out boring and lifeless. Livelihood can be achieved through dynamic brushwork, juxtaposing transparent and opaque colors, and keeping color mixing to a minimum; Just look at Schmid's colors in his still lifes. But I guess the most important element in creating a vibrant still life is the composition. Unlike landscape painting where the artist can only compose by taking up a particular perspective and there is almost no control on the position of say trees and plains, in still life, however, the artist can make composition-savvy decisions as to where each item will sit and why. The key here is to let the viewer's eyes move around from one item to the other all in a meaningful and previously planned way. There is no better place to learn that lesson than Daniel Keys' website. His compositions are so perfect that you never imagine they were actually set up.