A small still life painting can be created, from start to finish, in just a few hours and give you a satisfying sense of accomplishment.

Painting a small still life is also a great opportunity to practice techniques, color mixing, refine your brushwork, develop a good mastery of the media. Unlike when painting in a large size, using a canvas of a square foot or less permits you to focus on a detail and finish it, making it easier to understand the various stages of development of a painting, mastering the technique and making it much easier to tackle larger works later on.

Small paintings are also a great way to study a subject before starting a large work, resolving compositional issues, what color palette to use, the tonal aspects of the subjects and so on.

But a small still life, can also be just that: a satisfying little painting to hang on the wall and enjoy looking at, along with the other paintings we will create during the 6 sessions of his online course. The lessons will be recorded and you will receive a link to the recording to watch the painting session again at your leisure and as many times as you want, for one year. This way you can decide if paint along with me during the session, or just enjoy the demonstration first, and watch it again later at your convenience when you decide to paint.

Materials:

• A few canvases or canvas board, no larger than a square foot. There are many formats available, square or rectangular. 9”by 12 or 11” by 14” or even smaller, are good sizes.
• Paint: you can use the colors that you have already, but this is a basic palette that can be useful: cadmium red medium, alizarine crimson, cadmium yellow medium and cadmium yellow            lemon, ultramarine blue, cobalt blue, burnt sienna, raw sienna, black, white (titanium and zinc or titanium and lead white), you can also get viridian and sap green if you already have them.
• Medium: you can use the medium you prefer, but if you have to buy it I would get linseed oil (refined linseed oil will do), you can also use Liquin by Winsor & Newton or Galkid by Gamblin.
• Solvents: the lox toxicity-low odor Gamsol by Gamblin or the non toxic alternative Citrus solvent by Weber, if you can find it.
• Brushes: #4, #8 and #10 Filbert synthetic brushes will do most of the work, I like Utrecht Tuscan series, and a couple of synthetic, round brushes Utrecht Tuscan size 2 or Princeton Umbria in size 6. You can also get a couple of Filbert, hog bristle brushes in size 8 or so, hog bristle brushes are better suited to “push” the paint in the initial stages.
• A metal cup where to mix the medium, a large metal cup, such as a coffee can with a lid for the solvent, a palette knife, rags, a mixing palette or disposable paper palette. Finally a protective hand cream like Art Guard by Winsor & Newton to protect your hands from paint and solvents.