Still Life Tutorial

Every other week I put together a little tutorial titled Digimpasto. To date I only have five episodes up on my youtube channel covering basics in digital painting.

In July I completed episode 4 which demonstrated how to draw a still life using a graph directly on Photoshop. In this scene I went to a local Trader Joes and had a shopping list for items that could be used in a "classical" themed Still Life.

Coming home I took to my desk and set up the still life, taking about 40 pictures with different variations for each. I chose one that fit well with a rule-of-thirds composition to keep it simple and began planning this next project of mine.

Episode 5, in which I go about actually painting the still life, discusses lots of different points in the process of making the piece but the highlight in this episode centers around why the shadow areas need to be worked on carefully.

Da vinci stressed the importance of this element of his paintings because he regarded the "relief" as the "summit and soul of the painting."

In each episode I intend to go over one specific topic that is central to the demonstration just to make it easier for an artist at any skill level to easily digest the information and to take away some insights to apply towards their own practice.

Digimpasto airs the first and third Wednesday of each month. Please stop by my studio, won't you?