For Studios projects requiring scaffolding, this painted-wood brush holder was made to simply drop in place on top of the side of the scaffolding (a ProJax Multi-Purpose unit manufactured by bil-jax) that has served very well for quite a few years.
Many of the studio accessories that we have made of wood are painted green. We keep on hand a water-base interior paint that we use to coat the painted accessories, once in a while, so they don't accumulate a lot of paint-spatter. We don't try to protect every easel or accessory from paint--some spattering looks just fine. Using paint to refresh some of the equipment simply keeps the studio from looking more paint-weary than we'd like.