"Still Life with Red Flowers", 10 x 12 In, Oil on Museum Board
You may wonder about the boards I often use for small paintings--museum board. This is a surface that I learned about back in the mid-90's from
William Reese, who recently passed away. I purchase the 100% cotton rag museum board in 32 x 40 4-ply sheets, getting the
Risings brand because both sides are good, unlike some other museum board that I've tried. I seal both sides of the board with
Gamblin PVA Size, then apply three coats of gesso on one side with a
6" fine white roller. Since I do three coats, I try to make it fairly smooth. If you use a less fine roller, the surface may be too "pebbly" by the third coat. The surface will be slightly rough (if you use the absorbent gesso), so you can lightly sand it. Then I can cut the boards to the sizes I want to work on with my mat cutter. They are wonderfully lightweight for travel. I take a couple of pieces of foam core to tape the boards to for painting to give them stability.
Most acrylic gessos are slick once applied. Some people like to paint on a slick surface, but I prefer a more absorbent surface. The only gesso I've found to be absorbent is
Liquitex Basic Gesso. I can usually find this at my local Michael's or Joanne's. I once bought the Liquitex Pro and found it to be as slick as plastic, but I have mixed small amounts of that in with the Basic to make the Basic slightly less absorbent. I have no idea about the archival results of using this type of gesso--there are big discussions about this on various networks. This discussion on
Plein Air Artists is about using lead primer as a ground.
William Reese was my first plein air instructor. He studied with Sergei Bongart and was a wonderful painter. I highly recommend both of his books, and his wife, Fran, has put out a DVD with instructions about drawing parts of the horse from Bill's final days.
