People who just started painting (including me) always look for a hope of succes that someday we might be really good at it. We sometimes think that only if we could control everything, we could be such great painters like so many great artists. But the only formula of success is Hard Work and Practice.
Painting is about colour on a flat surface and you use to do it to express what you feel and describe what you see. Still life has one of those. You paint still life and describe anything you see, from tones, textures, value or light. But in order to do that familiarize yourself with colors.
It sounds untrue but it really is hard to recognize a color especially at your first look. I discovered that fact from the book I read and I realized that sometimes when you look at an object first, take for an example a tree, you know their leaves are gream but if you examine carefully and look at it for many times, it is actually quite yellowish green. But when you practice and practice, you become better and it will train your eyes to make fine judgments. So you need to train your eyes to carefully look and to really see, to identify and sort a colour. A person who is at first time of painting can also do this because there are only some of the basics to become good.
I found this simple exercise from the book I read about getting to know color. everybody can do this even for those who don’t really paint or draw. Maybe this will encourage you to pursue painting. This exercise is just using shapes, colors and examinations.
Take a simple subject. I am taking a banana as my subject.
TIP: Take a your own subject. A subject that will be challenging for you to examine colors.
What you need to do is to paint your subject flat, ignoring the shadows, texture, light or dark sides of it.
You can use watercolor, acrylic or any medium you found easy to use and not too complicated with colors.
First Thing: Outlining the area of colors with your brush.
Second Thing: Fill it with the colors. Before painting on the area, test the color on any scrap paper your find because the color can look different on the paper and on a palette.
Third Thing: Finishing the painting, look carefully on the detail but ignore those dark and lights. Touches of color will complete the painting.
After that, you produce a color that was seen by your eye. Look carefully at the painted banana, it is flat because I disregarded the shadows and the light to dark tones.
That exercise only train your eyes to recognize colors. Do it often or regularly and soon your eyes will be good at recognizing colors.
TIPS:
Use two bowls of water. One to mix colors and the other to clean your brush.
Don’t worry about shades, texture or anything. Of course that is needed to make a great painting but that is not applied in this exercise. It is not what the picture looks like but what you have learned in this article.
Step one
Step two
Final
. Still, I take advises from other people and do it. One advice was to use the appropriate brushes because they differ in many things (sizes and uses). Make sure you are in a good and refreshing mood when painting because the better your mood is, the better your painting will look like. Don’t ever paint when you are in a bad mood, make sure you like doing it. Before starting on a painting, think of a subject first. Widen your imagination 
