COMPOSITION - Still Life Setup Basics

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 Loading ... Description - The absolute basics for setting up a still life in your home or studio, to paint from life or to photograph.

The whole trick to setting up a composition for painting is “control.”  Control the light, control the environment, control the effects and mood.  It’s a marvelous bit of fakery - creating a vignette of common (or not so common) life that eventually will compel a viewer to think “now that was a really special image.”

Disclaimer: I am a terrible photographer, so this is not a demonstration of photography.  I only know enough for my photos to give me clues about what painting it from life would have been like.  Also I am not a composition expert, so this is not a demonstration of expert-level composition.  It’s just the nuts and bolts of setting up things to paint with decent enough lighting.

There are probably a lot of things around your home or studio that would make good stages for still life.  The table above happens to be a piano top.  It’s black, has a simple edge, shallow depth, and is nicely reflective.  I altered the background by using clips to put 2 brown backdrops in there - (OK, they’re the chipboard behind sketch pads.)  

The lighting is coming from a south facing window in early morning - very warm and dim.  This would only work from a photograph if I kept the natural lighting, because the sun would move quickly enough to alter the lighting very soon.  But it’s a nice enough mood.  You can see by the shadow behind the lamp that the light source is unclear.  If the shadow has a blurry  edges then the lighting is more diffuse.  If the shadow had multiple edges that would mean there were several light sources.  This has several light sources (bay window and more windows across the room.)  Not such a great situation.

This one is a little better.  The window on the left is facing north and will remain fairly stable for long stretches of the day, and the stuff on the table won’t move or rot very fast, so this would be a decent painting-from-life situation.  The room is painted a light color, so there’s a little ambient light bouncing around, keeping the shadow sides of everything from becoming too dark. 

The backdrop is a white bedsheet that’s propped up on an easel on the left and a rocking chair on the right.  Fancy!  I wouldn’t paint this entire scene of course - I’m just showing you the entire thing for the sake of example.  My backgrounds are usually more vague, so I don’t really care too much what it’s doing except that I want to see a specific light-to-dark shift, and I want the general color of the background.  But if you wanted interesting drapery folds in your background, this is a handy way of doing it.

In this set-up, you can see that even though I cropped the photo to show only my subject matter (the very bottom would be black, btw), there’s a distinctive blue cast from the left side. I thought I liked it, but I was wrong, and removed the curtains.  Moral of the story - pay attention to all the stuff on your stage.

The foreground is a cutting board set on top of a small table.  I have a collection of sheets and table cloths for backdrops, and an array of small tables of different colors and finishes, cutting boards to look like more tables, and pastel paper to change colors.  It’s nice to have options.

For more dramatic lighting effects on small still lifes,  a simple box makes  a great stage.  This is a paper box.  The lid is used on the left side to block more light.  The box can be papered or spraypainted in black if you like.  There’s a square cut on the right side through which a light can be shone for dramatic raking light effects.  I use a fixture with a 10″ aluminum reflector that’s basically just a socket and a cord with a clip, easy to move around.  Cost: $10 at the hardware store.  Fits a standard lightbulb - I use a compact “daylight” fluorescent.

Here’s a smaller box, papered black on the inside, and using natural light.  The side of the box casts a shadow over the objects that you’ve probably seen a LOT in small still lifes.  Boxes are very handy for painting from life too - they can be positioned to block out whatever light you’re using to light your canvas.

After I have set up a bunch of things I think might be nice for painting and adjusted the lighting, backdrop and table surface, then I start to play with the objects and composition.  If working from life, I hold up my hands to make a rectangle and look through it to see the composition.  Then scootch something a little, then look again.  Over and over until I think I have what I want.

If working from photos, I take a dozens and dozens of photos, even for something simple.  Scootch, snap.  Scootch, snap. 

About my camera:  I do not have a good one, just a Sony Cybershot 7.2 megapixel.  It works OK.  Here’s the setup:

• Always use a tripod
• Always used in “program” mode, not “auto”
• For north light, most likely set to ISO 100 to reduce graininess
• Always zoomed to at least 1.7 to reduce distortion
• Usually set to “cloudy”
• Focus set to “center”
• Always use the 2-second delay so that pushing the button doesn’t jostle the camera

Working from photos allow you to paint things that are fleeting - flowers that die fast, light that changes, and also unusual angles that you probably couldn’t maintain physically.  When taking photos, don’t just move the stuff, move the camera - up, down, left right.  Move the light too.  Rotate the table.  Rotate the objects.  There are millions of variations.

After taking maybe 60-80 photos, I download everything into the PC, and start looking for something that will work.  After narrowing it down to 10 or so, I put them all onscreen at the same time to compare and pick the winner.  Or sometimes, to figure out how I want to reshoot the scene.  Sometimes there’s nothing good.

HINT: If something is close but no cigar, having photos organized into folders by subject matter (tulips, tomatoes, daffodils etc) makes it easier to find a better blossom to swap in later.

I hope this was in some ways helpful.  It’s how I personally work, but I’m sure there are other and better ways.  Please share your thoughts!