Still Life with White Rose (click on picture to enlarge)

You find interesting objects which you think would fit  together to make an interesting still life but what about the background? This painting had 3 changes of background. If you decide on a flat background, OK you just colour it in and place the objects on top. If, however, the background has depth then you are into the realm of ‘landscape’. Here the rules of perspective are important and because you are close up, the extreme end of the perspective issue usually comes into play. There is no easy way around this. Its complicated, suffice to say converging lines are the most important part of working out the shape of items when viewed obliquely.

Converging lines

The shape of the table top was decided by constructing a sketch as above. This is a simple example but the right hand side of the painting was created using the same technique.

I am working on the YouTube videos (2 parts) at the moment, compressing about 6 hours painting time into 2 ten minute time lapse videos. More on this in the future.