44 artistFebruary 2021 http://www.painters-online.co.uk
There’s a whole range of shapes and
sizes available and they’re great to
experiment with. The flat palette knives
are more suited to initial mixing of
colours on the palette and are useful
when mixing up larger quantities of
paint.
Supports and grounds
Supports fall into two categories,
flexible and rigid. Flexible supports
include canvas, linen, hessian, flax,
calico, card or even paper. The canvas-
textured paper often sold in pads will
provide an economical painting surface.
Rigid supports include hardboard,
MDF, wood panels (hardwood) and
the popular canvas-covered boards,
in which the canvas is glued to
compressed cardboard or MDF, which
is even more sturdy. Royal Talens and
Jackson’s sell a range of canvas and
linen panels that are bonded to MDF
and these are certainly among my
favourites.
All supports will need some form of
primer or ground adding before you
can start applying paint. Most stretched
canvases, canvas boards and pads will
probably come ready primed, but
you may want to give these another
coat of acrylic gesso, although
this shouldn’t be necessary with
quality branded products.
Among my favourite supports is
basic 3mm MDF. I generally apply
three coats of acrylic gesso to the
surface. The gesso can be applied
as thinly or thickly as you want,
and it does create a satisfactory
and economical rigid surface to
paint on. You won’t have the textured
quality of canvas showing through, but
that’s not always a requirement.
I rarely paint on a white ground,
usually opting for warm or cool greys,
or perhaps ochres, it all depends onthe mood I’m setting out to create.
Often, portions of this background
colour will be allowed to show through
in the finished piece, which does
give some degree of cohesion or
harmony to the finished work. It’s much
easier to judge and adjust your tonal
values and colours when working on
a neutral ground – an important point
to consider. I’ve illustrated this with a
simple snow scene on both a neutral
grey (above right) and a burnt sienna
ground (above). Use thinned oil paint
or, as I often do, thinned-down acrylic,
applied with either a large flat brush or
a cloth.p Snow: burnt sienna ground (above) and
Snow: grey ground (above right).
Here you can see the advantages of a
coloured ground – darker and lighter tones
are more noticeable – you wouldn’t see these
so well on a white ground