Setting up a still life in my studio

In  this December right after me moving in to my new place I decided in order to get better finally paint from life. And since I'm very, very shy person and in England and when it's winter - it's really bad idea to go out to paint so I made a decision to start small - to set up a basic still life in my apartment.

"what I want to paint?" I asked myself. As Richard Schmid advocates it should be something that excites you....

You wouldn't believe this but squashes excite me a lot - especially when I make a delicious meals out of them (my favourite is hokkaido squash pancake with some yogurt and strawberries on top) but that's maybe for a different kind of blog or maybe not - write my an enquiry and I'll send you an email with a recipe. My another precious thing in my life is a good coffee and I really dig my moka maker (it's a miraculous tool indeed!). So I gathered them all together and result is seen on the pictures below.

Few mistakes were made - I set up my first still life for a natural daylight which made me a person under a pressure - since I don't have northlight window, shades and lighting were moving so fast so it was kind of a hustle. And a second mistake was that I hadn't made myself a coffee before this sitting so it was twice as demanding to make a picture without a proper level of caffeine because my moka maker was in capture...

Anyhow you can see the result here:

Quicky! - light's coming!

It's been set up pretty quickly - I knew what I wanted - Squashed dance :-D

"Squashed dance around moka" (oil on canvas panel 6x8 inch)