Flowers and Food- they don't really go together, but I had this (great?) idea to create paintings with a color theme and use the roses in my garden and the food in my refrigerator!!! I love to paint still lifes an
d flowers are sooo hard to paint well. I think I can
learn a lot during this slow selling period by concentrating on the all-important skills of observation. Too many artists seem to think they can just paint something from memory. That's fine if you've painted your subject a hundred times already, but if you're not familiar with something there is no way to get real results without actually SEEING and OBSERVING it. This is very important when it comes to painting your still lifes. Look at the negative space. Is it interesting? Do the colors of your objects compliment each other? Is there structure in the DESIGN of the layout-i.e. classic pyramid or triangle or golden rectangle. A really good test is to pretend you have divided your picture plane into 4 equal areas. Would each area have it's own individual and interesting desing? Could it stand on it's own without the other three areas?
