Still Life with Oil Paints

Lessons

About This Lesson Series...

The Still Life Garlic with Oils lesson series is a comprehensive and engaging oil painting project that guides students through the entire process of creating a still life on a canvas or panel. Over the course of eight videos and roughly eight hours of instruction, you’ll learn not just how to paint a still life of garlic and supporting elements, but how to think, mix, and work like a confident oil painter from beginning to finish.

Lesson 1: Materials and Strategy

The series begins with an in-depth discussion of materials and strategy for approaching the painting. You’ll learn about essential tools—such as bristle and soft nylon brushes, traditional oil paints, and mediums or thinners—and how they interact on the painting surface. This initial lesson also introduces overall pacing and approach, helping you understand what to expect in the lessons ahead and how to build your workflow for a successful painting.

Lesson 2: Drawing with a Modified Grid

Accurate drawing is the backbone of a strong oil painting, and in lesson two you’ll develop the still life’s composition using a modified grid method. This technique helps ensure correct proportion and placement of each object—especially organic forms like garlic cloves and other subject elements—before any paint is applied. A solid underlying drawing prevents early mistakes and allows you to focus on color and form in later stages.

Lesson 3: Monochromatic Underpainting

With the drawing in place, lesson three shifts to value and tonal structure, using a monochromatic underpainting. This greyscale layer establishes lights, midtones, and darks across the composition, creating a roadmap of value that supports subsequent color application. Developing a strong underpainting ensures your final colors read with clarity and depth.

Lessons 4 & 5: Building Local Color

Lessons four and five introduce local color over the underpainting. You’ll begin blocking in the basic hues of each object and gradually refine color relationships, bringing life to the garlic and nearby items. Lesson five specifically begins focused work on a glass bottle, teaching how to break complex reflections and transparency into manageable components.

Lessons 6 & 7: Background Development

As your foreground elements take shape, lessons six and seven direct attention to the red fabric background. Here, you’ll learn how to build rich color, texture, and depth behind your main subject, creating contrast that enhances the still life’s forms and draws the viewer’s eye into the composition.

Lesson 8: Final Glazes and Finishing Touches

In the final lesson, a series of transparent glazes are applied to unify the composition, deepen shadows, and lift highlights. This concluding step adds luminosity and polish to the painting, demonstrating how glaze layers can refine color and atmosphere in oil painting.

A Complete Oil Painting Experience

By the end of the Still Life Garlic with Oils series, you’ll have a fully developed still life painting and a strong understanding of how to work with oils—from materials and drawing through color, texture, and final refinement. These lessons give you a confident workflow and valuable techniques applicable to future oil painting projects.

Resources for this Lesson...

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References

Photo Reference

Finished Result

Here's what you'll need...

• Canvas or Panel
• Bristle Brushes
• Soft Nylon Brushes
• Oil Paints
• Medium or Thinner

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