Brush, Ground and Size still life

This is a little, 8" x 10" still life painting of some of the tools of the artists trade.

The white bottle is "sizing" which is used for preparing canvases (it protects the linen or cotton fibers from the destructive acids in the oil paint). The silver can is "ground", the lean white oil paint that's spread over the sized canvas (lean means that it doesn't have a high oil content. Oil paintings have to be done "fat over lean", meaning more oil in later layers, less oil in earlier layers). And the brushes and cups are for pouring and applying it.

I've been doing these little 1 or 2 hour oil studies almost every day, in the spirit of the painting-a-day movement. It's a great exercise, forcing a freshness and lightness to the work that can get lost in longer, more worked out paintings.


(click to enlarge)