If you're working from life, as we all will be at different points during this course, there are various things to think about which will affect the outcome of your painting.

Before you gather several objects to arrange ask yourself what interests you most about painting right now, and secondly still life as a subject.

Is it dramatic shapes? Colour? Relationships or emotions? The contrast of forms? Realism? Abstraction? Memory? Meaning? Or something else? Or a combination of a few of these?

What can you find around your home that can suggest or support those themes?

What you might find as you start arranging things is that you discover the things you thought were of primary importance may shift slightly. For example, in this video I notice some smaller vessels on a shelf behind what I am arranging and while I think I say that I don't plan on including those, I remember being struck by the difference in scale within a relatively small picture plane. I made a mental note this is something I'd like to play with in the future.

If you have trouble opening the YouTube video you can click the link below

As you add and subtract objects while arranging a still life consider some of these things:

• varying the height of objects

• raising and lowering your eye level as you look at what you're setting up. This could mean that you decide to set up on a platform higher than your work surface, perhaps a board on some books or a box; or a lower surface like a chair with a board on top so that you can look down on it

• a light colour underneath your objects if you're interested in shadow colour

• bright or dark colours behind or under for drama and to throw colours into relief

• are you looking for a gentle calmness or a bold statement or somewhere in between?

• is the relationship between the objects important to you?

• could the negative shape between objects be more interesting?

• if space is a challenge arrange a line of objects on either side of you and work on one at a time, altering their placement in your painting. If this is the case then a sketch plan or drawing in chalk on your background would be helpful

• if space is in plentiful supply you could set up something elaborate to choose a variety of compositions from that could work well as a series

• you could take photos of setups you create to assess compositions and to work from or shots of found scenarios elsewhere to work from

How do you tend to set up a still life? Share your thoughts in the comments :)