Painting A Still Life Helps Improves Your Artistic Skills

The Brookings Plein Air Artists know, like many artists, that painting still life setups will improve your artistic skills.  Painting a still life setup you will learn to draw better, see color and improve your compositions.
It forces you to be more accurate and, therefore,  improve your drawing skills. You need good drawing skills when painting man-made objects such as a bowl, a car, a building or bridge.
You get a better color accuracy because you can see the color relationships and how the color is effected by the light and surrounding colors in a still life.  When you are painting from photographs, you are not able to see the true color so you will tend to make the color up. The camera cannot possibly capture the actual colors.  Painting outdoors the light is moving so you must paint quickly and you rely on your experience to paint the color and value. You can get  this experience from painting a still life setup.
You, also, learn placement  and composition by cropping your drawing into interesting light and dark shapes.  This is done doing several three to four value thumbnail sketches. You are able to take your time and not be concerned of the changing weather or light.

Here is an example of Verna Pooler's watercolor still life. Look how beautifully she drew and painted the shoes.  Then look how she described the roses with three values. Verna left the white of the paper to show the highlights. This is an excellent example of a composition and watercolor. To find out more about this painting select HERE.

"Red Romance"  12X16 Watercolor On Paper