In the process of painting a still life the first step is to gesso your canvas. After the gesso has dried now you are ready to begin. Place the canvas on the easel at eye level. Do this so that you are able to see paint and everything in the still life without turning your head.Now using your view finder you will see what it is you are going to place in your picture. The color burnt sienna is used with mineral spirits to start by lightly coloring the canvas and  and lightly placing the objects roughly on the canvas.

Step 2) Now you begin to place the objects in the picture defining them as so you can start to see what they might be. This is still just using the burnt sienna and mineral spirits.

This is what we were to choose from in our still life.

Now this is what I left off with. At this point I am color blocking and trying to get rid off all the white on the canvas. We begin to mixing colors.

The last picture reflects the beginning of painting in  shadow color in my books, you are starting to see the final brush strokes. For the pages use dingy yellow w/white for light book edges use a little orange and a dash of blue if still to dark add some orange and or white. when you are doing book pages try to use dry brush strokes.Hold the brush flat use thick side press and lift ,turning brush while matching the light you see. Using thin to thick and dark to light on the books. now we began holding the brush like a pencil and we began to drawing in the picture. The edges start to disappear. Paint both dark and light color,look at the still life then take a stroke then look and so on look at your lights inside on the pitcher in the still life. Use opposites on the color wheel to tame and build color. Orange-Blue,Violet-Yellow,Red-Green....

This is the Final product. To come to this point  I put the final strokes and find tuned any colors that didn't look right.In this step I got everything wet and adjusted the dark and light and and added the reflective lights to the globe and apple and the pitcher.