Learn to Paint the Perfect Daisies in this Artistic Painting Lesson

During this art lesson you will learn how to paint a bouquet of daisies, glass vase and a tablecloth with a fringe. We will create a cheerful mood and a background with a beautiful texture.
In fact the bouquet of daisies is quite simple picture. In order to make it more interesting to the audience, I decided to supplement the ordinary still life with the complicated background, which features the texture and the combination of various shades of blue-green, and to add some silver in order to make the texture look more luxurious.
This short oil painting lesson video will show you how to paint a beautiful summer still life using the oil paints in a few hours. Here all the most important moments and oil painting techniques are showed.

You will need the following oil paints for our painting lesson:

• White
• Phthalocyanine Blue
• Ceruleum
• Cobalt Blue
• Cobalt Violet Light
• Turquoise Blue
• Phthalocyanine Green
• Lake Pigment Red strong
• Cadmium Yellow Medium
• Cadmium Red
• Silver (Van Pure)
• and the dammar varnish

Apply the paint onto the canvas with the small pieces. There should be more blue shades and silver on the periphery of the canvas and more white, green and cobalt violet in the middle of the canvas. Mix the paints with the help of the crumpled paper, as it is shown in the first lesson, with only one small difference:

apply a small amount of dammar varnish along with the paint thinner on the periphery of the canvas.

In this case we need the dammar varnish in order to keep the texture unchangeable in the process of mixing the paints texture and make it dry up as quickly as possible. There is still a lot of work in the center of the canvas, so the quick drying paint is useless here. Therefore you should not apply the dammar varnish in the area where you plan to place you bouquet and vase. You should try to remember these useful canvas painting techniques.

Because the entire canvas is covered with quite dense layer of the background paint, we need to «free» some space in order to start working on our still life. Remove an excess paint with a stationery knife blade or a long palette knife in the center of the canvas.

Then use the tip of a sharp palette knife and sketch out:

• the place where the vase with flowers will be painted
• the «skyline», the edge of the surface, where the vase will stand

At the next stage of our fine art lesson you should sketch out the flowers. It is very simple and easy to paint the daisies; especially the flowers will be painted quickly and naturally if you draw them with a palette knife or your fingers. It is a great pleasure to paint the daisies with the fingers: dip your finger into the white and after a few touches to the canvas, the flower is almost ready.

But you should not forget about the volume of the bouquet and each flower.
You should remember and take into account the fact that the bouquet has its shadow and illuminated part. In my work the light falls on the bouquet on top and on the left.
And this means that those flowers, which are on the left, are well-lit and we will paint them with the following paints:

• pure White or;
• White with a little tincture of Cadmium Yellow Medium or;
• White mixed with Lake Pigment Red strong and Cadmium Yellow Medium

In order to make the enlightened flower more expressive, you should paint it quite pastously, applying a thick layer of paint.
Paint the flowers, which are in the shadow, applying a thin layer of paint: the White mixed with:

• Phthalocyanine Blue, Green, Turquoise or Sky Blue.

Use the various mixes of white with the listed paints, so that the bouquet will become more rich and natural. After all if you look closely, you will notice the flowers (and the separate leaves) which are illuminated to different extents and are either in shadow or illuminated parts of the bouquet, this means they have different shades and reflections from other objects.

The next stage of our oil painting lesson is painting a glass globed vase. You have already learnt how to paint a globe – stretch and smooth the paint on its round convex surface making the rounded movements. When painting the glass items, you should remember a few important rules.

The darkest part of the glass object is located on the side where the light falls.
The big clear beautiful fleck is on this darkest part. The fleck repeats the form of the object. The round object cannot have a fleck in the form of a straight; the fleck should be rounded on the on glass globe.
On the contrary the shadow part of the glass object is the lightest one and its overtone, a small speck, is on the opposite side of the fleck.

The shadows provide the volume and are very important in a still life. The shadows of all objects should lie in the same direction in a still life. The flecks as well as the shadows should be on the same side of all the objects (in my work all the flecks are on the left and all the shadows fall backwards and to the right).

How to make a still life more interesting?

Please, watch free video painting lesson:

Let’s paint the beautiful white napkin with a fringe. The task is not difficult. Apply the white with a bit of yellow and pink on the illuminated part of the still life, the shaded part of the napkin should be done with the white and the tincture of cool blue and green shades. In order not to let the white tone of the tablecloth mix with our underpainting, apply a thick layer of white with a palette knife, gently smooth it with a round palette knife and flatten with a stationery knife blade.

Paint the fringe of the tablecloth using a palette knife with a sharp tip, pulling the white strings from the edges of the tablecloth. A fringe will look more natural and beautiful if you will use the different shades of paints with the white for each of the strings.

Do not forget that a tablecloth should have its shadow: take the Phthalocyanine Blue and use the brush in order to paint the shadow of the tablecloth.
There is a rounded shadow of the vase on the tablecloth. Paint it using the Cobalt Violet and the Phthalocyanine Blue. The shadow should be the darkest and the most intense at the bottom of the vase. The further the shadow falls from the vase – the softer it becomes.
Paint the grass and the leaves of the daisies with the help of a thin brush (chisel synthetic 2) or a palette knife, making quick abrupt movements and using the light blue, yellow and turquoise for the light part and Phthalocyanine Green and Cobalt Violet for the shadow part.

On the last stage of our oil painting lesson online you should make the picture even more interesting. Complement the tablecloth with the berries of black-currant or blueberry scattered on the table. Take a dense nubble of Cobalt Violet with a palette knife and put a fat dot – this is a berry. The light has fallen on a berry, hence there should be a fleck – sip a thin brush into the dense white and put a small dot on the left side. There should be a shadow under the berry – paint it with the Phthalocyanine Blue. That’s all – the beautiful volume berry is ready. Draw such berries all over the table and beyond its edges.

That’s it – a few hours – and our summer still life with white daisies ready. Our still life art lesson is over.

I wish you all good luck and inspiration!