Still Lifes

In the past year I've done a few still lifes. In the two books I've been going through for oil painting (Oil Painting Techniques and Materials and The Practice of Oil Painting and Drawing) they both suggest to get the drawing down first. Then mix up and paint the background and ground tones. Mix light, halftone and shadow tones for the objects and simplify the tones as much as possible with a big brush. And hold off on details until you have everything else down. 

It sounds straightforward, but when you actually sit down and start painting, things suddenly become incredibly complex and stay that way... Until a few hours later, when you either have a painting that looks similar to what's sitting in front of you or it looks nothing like it and you just have to hope that you learned something useful for next time.

Skull and Flower Pot oil painting