ONE OF THE MOST ENJOYABLE and instructive paintings to do during the warm months is a still life of summer flowers. Summer light provides opportunities to use brighter, pure, high chroma colours as well as to design dramatic high contrast compositions. The garden flowers of summer are natural subjects for artists who love both colour and nature. I have set up a still life painting, presented in steps, to illustrate the possibilities of subject, composition, lighting, textural brushwork, colour variety and intensity.
The combination of bright golds, blues, yellows and greens is natural when paired with the warm light of a summer afternoon seen through a window. The shapes of flowers and their leaves create natural contrasts and silhouettes when placed innear a brightly lit window. The goal here is to create a painterly, atmospheric painting.
