Project Instructions

The challenge of this painting project is to paint a still life featuring a chair. (Note: The painting is to be a still life not a landscape featuring a chair, nor a room interior with a chair in it.) There are various decisions you'll need to make about the composition, including:

• The angle and strength of the light falling on the chair.
• What the viewpoint will be (will you see the chair from a standing position, as if you were sitting down, or a mouse's viewpoint?).
• What angle will the chair be (from the front, side, back or even upside down?).
• Will there be anything on the chair, such as a cushion or a book, or perhaps something that suggests personality about an unseen person?
• How much background and foreground will you include? You may want some to give context, but not so much it detracts from the focal point (the chair itself).

Vincent van Gogh famously painted his own chair (now in the National Gallery in London) and Gauguin's chair (now in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam) when they were staying together in the Yellow House in Arles, in the south of France. He mentions them in some of his letters, telling his brother Theo in a letter dated 17 January 1889 that he'd been painting his own "empty chair" after finishing a study of Gauguin's chair, trying "for an effect of light by means of clear color".

Please note: New submissions for this project gallery are currently not being accepted. Check the list of monthly painting projects to see what the current project is.