Christmas Cookies, Daler-Rowney System3 on St Cuthberts Botanical Ultra Smooth 300gsm paper, (14.5x18cm)

Learn how to paint a Christmas still life with Milly England

'This is a great exercise in increasing your confidence in your own colour choices, whilst still capturing the light in an image,' says Milly.

Top tips before you begin:
  1. Although it will be nice to brighten the colours where the light is shining, try to ensure you capture the dramatic candlelight by keeping the shadowed areas dark, for example the shadows to the bottom left of the plate and the two mugs. Contrast this darkness with the flashes of light on the right-hand rims of the crockery. These are pure white and could be the finishing touch that brings your painting to life.
  2. I’d like to draw your attention to the candy canes – note that the stripes that we see are not straight. By replicating the curve of the stripes, your candy cane will be perfectly set as three dimensional. Adding the pure white highlight on the top of each cane and accentuating the shadows falling to the left will help in capturing their curved cylindrical shapes.
  3. I’m not going to worry about the mottled detail of the work surface – I’m going to treat this as a plain surface and ignore the mottled design. Sometimes less is more!
  4. As the design on the plate is so detailed, I’ll try to include all the colours, but I won’t worry hugely about replicating the exact pattern. As the mug pattern is so much simpler, however, I will try to match this as much as possible. Although the colours used on the plate are not the same as on the mugs, I’m going to try to match them together. For example, I’ll use my turquoise for the blue on the plate and my mint green for the green on the plate.
  5. For the tiles, the work surface and some areas of shadow, I plan to water the acrylics down into a wash and layer them up to give the impression of candlelight. I’ll use the paint very thickly for the details on the crockery, the candy canes and the white highlights across the image.

Your colour mixes:

  • The red on the candy canes, cups and plate – cadmium red + process magenta
  • The turquoise leaves on the mug and blue flowers on the plate – process cyan + white
  • Mint green on the mug, mug handle and plate, plus holly highlights – process cyan + cadmium yellow + white
  • The sides of the biscuits and the hot chocolate highlights – burnt sienna opaque + white
  • The tops of the biscuits – yellow ochre
  • Various shades of grey for the shadows – process black + white
  • The hot chocolate – burnt sienna + process black + cadmium red
  • The main holly colour – process cyan + cadmium yellow + white
  • Light coming in from the right-hand side, on the work surface and on the rim of the mug – yellow ochre + cadmium yellow + white

Demonstration: Christmas Cookies

Your reference photo for this scene: a festive still life with mugs, plate, biscuits and candy cane