Support Surfaces

Throughout the course, you are free to use whichever painting surface you prefer. The course itself focuses upon painting on traditional non-absorbing (sealed) gessoed surfaces: either stretched canvas, canvas board or any other surface that has been gessoed, such as wood, card, etc.Canvas paper can be used too, although it needs to be solidly mounted and the the quality of the gesso sometimes causes absorbency problems. I often paint on 16″x20″ canvases and I’d recommend sizes between 12″x16″ and 18″x24″ – larger if you have a very expressive style (and lots of paint!).

I also enjoy painting on non-gessoed surfaces, such as watercolour or multimedia paper, however these are absorbent and some of the techniques for wiping and blending will not work the same way. Artist-quality, acid-free surfaces are obviously preferred, however when learning, it’s best not to be too choosy. I paint studies on gessoed cardboard regularly. At the other end of the quality spectrum, some realist artists apply additional gesso to store-bought canvas, however in most instances this is far from essential.