Students painted still life paintings  this year to practice painting techniques. Still life paintings  are non-living objects and have been a popular subject for artist to paint for centuries.  Although still life paintings are often simple everyday objects, they offer a number of challenges such as color mixing, painting different textures and capturing light and shadow.  It is one of best subjects to focus on when learning how to paint. The focus of this unit is not on making a single painting, but rather learning skills to paint many different things.  Because of this, students did several (3-5) smaller paintings over a 3 week period. We used reference pictures that are good examples of paintings that students can learn from. This year we also added landscapes paintings as an option .