First still life painting for 2023

A few days ago I just finished the first still life painting for 2023. It is a small painting 20 x 25 cm, painted on fine linen that I attached to an archival Ampersand board.
A hard surface is my preferred surface to paint on, but not only that a solid surface is also the most archival one. Paintings tend to last longer on a solid surface and this is because the surface is not affected by humidity as it is not susceptible to the cycles of stretching and shrinking which causes cracking of oil paint. 

Nowadays I also tend to prefer painting on a very smooth surface hence using a piece of linen with minimal tooth is my preferred option. I prefer to attach a piece of linen onto an already primed board simply because if something had to happen to the painting, for example getting wet, and the backing board is damaged one can still save the painting and reattach it to a new board.

The still life objects were arranged in a shadow box and illuminated from above. I had a Japanese tea set which I always wanted to paint and I arranged together with a lemon and a piece of moringa from our back yard. in order to create some contrast I used a red background. For this painting I only used a limited palette consisting of five paints, the three primaries, burnt umber and titanium white. The painting was executed in two main stages, starting with drawing/imprimatura and the second coloured stage using a wet-on-wet approach.