It can be very helpful not to have the paint dry too quickly.
(There are various ways of achieving this.)The reason is that a small or slight change in the colour or tone of an area of paint is very easy while the paint is still wet.Once the paint is dry,you have to repaint the whole area from scratch ,with all the problems this causes.It is not easy to stop the 'patch' looking like a 'patch'.So I always try to keep a whole region wet while still working on it.
One obvious method is to avoid qhick drying colours.Off the top of my head....
- flake white (if ground in linseed oil)
- Raw Umber
- Burnt Umber
- ..and any quick drying media,such as
- Copal Varnish
- Dammar Varnish
- Oil Modified Alkyd Resin
Quite the reverse applies for any under-painting you wish to do in your still life. In that case,the quicker
drying the better-and a uniform (not to say 'pleasant') surface is not so important. Under painting of a bunch
of live flowers is rarely possible!
(By the time you've under-painted them, they are usually dead.) So you have to work quickly,and with no preliminary
painting-except maybe a toning of the ground you are working on.
Books on Still Life Painting, Books on Painting Technique
To next Still Life Paintings Page.