I offer you to get acquainted with a step-by-step guide to painting a still life in the layered technique using oil paints.

The process can bring much fun and has a kind of beauty in it, gives an understanding of the 17th-century European oil painting.

First, determine the composition. Make an emphasis on a vase. Then add flowers.

Make a transparent underpainting in brown shades. At this stage, you can add a bit of colour — Mars Brown and Raw Siena, Alizarin Crimson and Ultramarine.

Use the underpainting stage to distinguish light parts from dark ones. You can wipe off excess paint.

When the underpainting has slightly dried, apply varnish and work with colour.

Work from left to right if you're a right-handed man.
Now better use rich and clear colours.

The nature of light and its direction is well seen on the surface of the vase.

The same tendency is seen everywhere: the light is more or less visible on the leaves, flowers, draping.

Details are modelled differently in the highlights and in the shadows: shadow generalizes small parts together.

The light influences the way you apply paints. White petals and buds are somewhere painted with a palette knife.

Turning, the edge of the bouquet gently blends with the background.

Rich decor of the vase also requires attention. But remember that some things are generalized and fuzed.

The glare of gold luster is transferred with the palette knife.

Add reflections on the vase: the flowers are mirrored in its surface.

I was looking for an understanding how to finish the bottom — added an apple twig.

Give the background depth with broad strokes of the palette knife — I added shimmering reddish and greenish.

As a final accent, I depicted two lemon butterflies and fallen petals on the table.