The BlueTeapot, oil, (20” x 24”)

Jackie Winkworth shows how to paint a still life in oils as she demonstrates The Blue Teapot.

The benefits of painting still lifes

For this demonstration I have chosen to paint a still life in oils. It always surprises me that beginners tend to avoid still life as a subject since it offers a perfect opportunity to study at leisure so many of the problems of painting. No other subject matter can provide the artist with such an opportunity to concentrate for an unlimited time on a subject that does not move and stays in an unchanging light.

This is not so easy to achieve in portrait paintings, with the model moving and needing rests and then trying to resume the same pose. In landscape painting also after travelling to the chosen spot the scene changes either because of the sun moving, or because it clouds over, which alters all the tone and colour values. In addition wind may irritate by blowing the paper or canvas. Or it rains, or passers-by peer over your shoulder.

In still life painting there are none of these hazards, neither travel, insects, people nor weather to interfere with the contemplation of the work in hand.

Some students say it is dull, and it can be. We all know the conventional still life with its obligatory backcloth, bottles and fruit and feel it has all been done before. But it need not be boring or just an exercise. There are many things around, other than the conventional, that can fire the imagination. It could be the shape or colour of a pot, a pile of books, a sewing machine, a saucepan or a group of objects ‘found’ in passing. These things need not necessarily be beautiful in themselves, but simple things which the artist sees freshly.

A painting of a loaf of bread on a board might well have more interesting possibilities of shape, texture, tone and colour than a cut glass vase on a velvet cloth. Received notions of what is beautiful can often get in the way of seeing anew the most ordinary objects. As Michelangelo said, “It’s better to paint well a fish in the market place than to paint badly an archangel in a cathedral.”

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Different approaches to still life painting

Still Life (Natura morta). Giorgio Morandi (1890–1964). © DACS 2023. Photo credit: Tate

There are many ways in which painters have approached still life painting, from the Dutch 17th century examples which every last detail of pewter, cloth and china lovingly depicted, to the 20th century Italian artist Morandi’s deceptively simple paintings of pots, bowls and bottles with their subtle relationships of placing and restrained colour.

The Peppermint Bottle, 1893/1895. Public domain painting by Paul Cézanne available from The National Gallery of Art.

Cezanne’s strong still lifes reveal his carefully placed brush strokes which build up the solidity of an apple and its surrounding space, yet keep the two-dimensional design. Painting very slowly, he struggled to work out his ideas, scraping and reassessing passages all the time.

When he painted from live models he kept them sitting for weeks on end, to their discomfort, and became irritated when they moved. Still life was much more suitable for his slow way of working and even then his fruit withered and rotted before he had finished the painting.

There are many different and interesting solutions to still life painting and you will see that there is no one answer and certainly that it need not be dull. It is what you make of it.

Whatever the subject, whether landscape, portrait, flowers or a still life, one is juggling with the same elements. The intention may be a realistic interpretation of the subject, but underlying this, if the painting is to work, are the abstract concepts which all artists recognise. These are the interrelationships of shapes, rhythms, tonal masses and colour harmonies. A painting is built on these structures and without them, no matter how realistic, a painting will be weak.

The sill life I have painted for this demonstration stemmed initially from a desire to paint a blue teapot I had recently acquired. The small jug was sitting on a shelf in my studio with the dried statice, picked on a cliff-side in Greece, which I had intended to paint but never did

How to set up a still life - creating an informal quality

Where still life objects are placed is always of importance to me because I like to include the surrounding environment as part of the whole, not to make the still life objects an isolated group relating to nothing. A ‘found’ still life will often have this informal quality with parts of other objects included. Setting-up a still life can sometimes result in a contrived appearance which can become rather too set and formal.

In my still life demonstration below, when the objects were first placed on the table, my immediate reaction was to see if any background material could make a contribution. I liked the shapes, angles and tones of the chair-back, open cupboard and framed painting which formed a central angular space and acted, with the table, as a counter to the roundness of the teapot and jug. The vertical pattern of the chair-back was echoed by the upright dark of the open cupboard, and the repetition of stripes, straight horizontals on the table and wavy diagonals on the cushion pleased me.

I added the little bowl which repeated the circular theme of the teapot and jug and provided a point of interest in the foreground, thus becoming an essential part of the flat design. The cloth, just pushed on the table, formed folds which were useful as a means of interrupting the insistent stripes and of pulling the eye into the centre.

Having settled the still life I made exploratory sketches to pin down my ideas, using only rough marks and no detail. This enabled me to sort out the general divisions and proportions, just seeing the main shapes and tones. The function of these sketches is to see “what would happen if…?” If I omit the chair. If I include the side of the table. If I move round and alter the relationship of the objects. If I use an upright format instead of a horizontal one. And so on.

Having reached a conclusion on all these points I found a suitable piece of hardboard, already primed with three coats of white acrylic primer, with pumice powder added to the last coat to give the surface a slight tooth.

Demonstration: The Blue Teapot

Stage 1

Initial composition drawing in ultramarine blue paint diluted with turps. Note that the whole surface area of the board is covered with marks relating all parts and divisions of space to each other.

I began the painting by drawing with a Number 5 short, flat hog-hair brush in ultramarine blue paint diluted with turps.

My sketches were kept as compositional reference only and I worked more from the still life and was prepared to alter anything if, as I saw it on a larger scale, it seemed to need reinterpreting. A turpsy rag was invaluable here and I wiped out and redrew marks I had made.

As you will see, marks are all I am concerned with at this stage. My eye travelled all over the board, relating one point to another, looking for distances between parts and divisions of the space. The larger issues were all that mattered here.

Stage 2

Here the objects are more carefully stated and a turpsy cloth was used to wipe out and refine shapes. The composition is still very linear and the white ground clean in order to give the later application of colour as much luminosity as possible.

In this second stage the drawing of the objects was searched out and more clearly stated, the turpsy cloth again allowing me to refine shapes and wipe out parts to be restated.

I kept it very linear, leaving the tonal masses, which I had worked out in my sketches, until I could combine them with colour.

I like to keep the white ground as unsullied as possible to give the succeeding colours a luminous quality.

Stage 3

The painting is kept to the same stage of development throughout the whole composition as the picture surface is gradually built up with darks placed at crucial points to give an overall tonal balance.

My concern now, in this third stage, was to build up, right across the picture surface, keeping the whole painting to the same stage of development all the time. I placed darks at salient points so that I was aware of the whole tonal balance and not isolated bits.

Despite the lack of detail, the main bones of the painting were there already and continued to act as a structure, holding the painting together right up to the final stage.

Normally I use a very limited palette consisting of ultramarine, cadmium red, lemon yellow, yellow ochre, alizarin crimson, viridian, raw umber and titanium white and add other colours if they seem necessary – in this case it was cobalt blue.

My hog-hair brushes were exclusively short flats in a variety of sizes. I like to place a patch of paint of the right colour, tone and intensity in a particular place and avoid scrubbing in an approximate underpainting.

Stage 4

Nuances of colour and tone have now begun to be introduced. Note that the painting is dominated by the play between the warm and cool blues.

With the structure established I now began on this fourth stage to search out nuances of colour and tone. I found the blues of the teapot needed a much mauver blue than I had thought at first and the stripes in the cloth called for a cobalt blue, though even that varied, sometimes needing a warmer ultramarine in the darker areas to a cooler blue in the lighter passages. I worked between these two cool and warm blues throughout the painting, introducing them into the framed painting and the cushion.

I keep a separate brush for each colour and variation of tone, and so build up a fistful of brushes even at this early stage. This means each colour is kept as fresh as possible with no adulteration from one colour to another. Even rinsing in turps I find does not stop the dirtying of a succeeding mix, so I put up with having many brushes to clean after each painting session.

Stage 5

This represents a stage of reassessment whereby tones have been altered, changing the balance of areas that come forward and parts that are pushed back.

At this fifth stage I was comparing tone against tone and although I was painting carefully more specific areas it was not possible to make any addition without referring to other areas across the painting. Every stroke changed and influenced what was already there.

I worked on the darks in the chair and their relationship to the area behind and also darkened the side of the cloth hanging over the table, playing with tonal contrasts. Only by contrast could the light passages have some effect. This was a stage of reassessment, continually pushing some parts back by lowering the tones and pulling other areas forward.

Stage 6

The BlueTeapot. Oil 20” x 24”

In this final stage the top left area has been altered by the removal of the small frame behind the teapot and the change of angle of the large frame, resulting in a counterchange of dark chair against light, and light frame against dark.

In this last stage I became dissatisfied with the top left area. My solution was to alter the passage by removing the small frame which I decided was too fussy and muddled above the teapot and by lightening the large frame at the back and slightly changing its angle, making a less obvious repetition with the chair.

The resulting counterchange of dark chair against light, and light frame against dark, was better, but still kept the middle rectangular shape as I had visualised it.

There is always a need to be aware, during the painting process, of what changes are necessary and one of the joys of an opaque medium, like oil, is its ability to allow alterations as the need for adjustment arises.

I have found it difficult in this demonstration to stop at a particular point and say ‘this is a stage’. There are hundreds of stages all merging into one another and each painting follows its own course, dictated by its size, the objects, the lighting and what seems important to stress about a particular still life.

This article was originally published in the September 1989 issue of Leisure Painter. Enjoy endless inspiration with access to past and present issues of both The Artist and Leisure Painter magazines, plus exclusive video demos, tutorials and more, with our Studio Membership! Discover how you can join today.

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