You must have noticed why there are a lot of still-life studies in painting. Sometimes, starting out with a 4-shade monochrome palette. The reason for studying

You must have noticed why there are a lot of still-life studies in painting. Sometimes, starting out with a 4-shade monochrome palette. The reason for studying still life, classically by countless masters and in today's fine art courses, is that it teaches you about few things: 1. Being able to draw/paint from life. Still life objects are easily accessible without paying for a human model. 2. More importantly, household objects can easily be broken down into primitive shapes. Cups, Cans, Pots, Apples, etc.. 3. It teaches you about illumination, finding values by "Squinting" and finding edge quality (soft, hard, lost, etc.) Furthermore, the classical masters practiced "Chiascuro", i.e. high contrast and wide dynamic range light conditions that can be simulated indoors with still life. The reason why drawing is prerequisite for painting is that the act of application of paint depends on local values where your brush stroke is being applied to. In order to find the value of the color, you need to know the form. In order to know the form and how it is illuminated, you need to "internalize" the 3D aspect of the object. Therefore, always, drawing is 80% of the work in painting (80% to make a point, obviously, I don't know exact percentage).