We all like small still lives: satisfying little painting to hang on the wall and enjoy looking at.

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

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 bring a painting to finish in one session, giving you occasion to practice 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.

The 6 sessions of this online course will be recorded and you will have access to recordings for about 1 year, this way you can decide if to paint along with me during the session, or just enjoy the demonstration first and paint later watching the recordings.

Materials:

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, yellow ochre, burnt sienna, raw sienna, ultramarine violet sap green, Hooker’s green, black, white (titanium and zinc  or titanium and lead white),

• 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.