Making your own textured panels

[Stuart J. Gourlay]

Making Textured Panels

Materials for and preparation of the panels:

I use 1/4" MDF (medium density fiberboard) or 1/4" finish grade plywood (birch is less porous than oak). I buy 2 ft by 4 ft sheets (about $10) at the home store (Home Depot) and cut them up on my table saw to size. I most commonly make 9" by 12", 11" by 14" and 12" by 16" panels.  After cutting to size, I sand the edges and face to paint on with 120 grit or finer sand paper and coat the back with Golden Acrylic Polymer (GAC-100) to seal it. You can buy plywood or hardboard panels online or from your art store, or you can have a friend with a table saw cut them for you.  You can use 1/8" fiberboard if it is tempered (Masonite or Ampersand panels) or 1/8" plywood if it has 5 layers (Baltic birch from woodworking stores). Warping is more likely with thinner panels.

Texturing the Panels:

I use Liquitex Super Heavy Gesso (this costs about $29 per quart but goes a long way). An alternative is to mix 50/50 acrylic soft body gel medium (Liquitex, Golden or other) with artist's acrylic gesso. I then brush one coat on the front with a coarse 2" bristle brush using small strokes of this texture coat; don't make it too thick and the smaller the panel, the less texture needed.

Gessoing the Textured Panels:

When the texture coat is dry, I paint the sides and front with 2 coats of my casein modified gesso using a soft 1 inch gesso brush (Princeton) or any soft bristle brush from the art or hardware store. The way I make my caein modified gesso is as follows: I buy a 16oz jar of Blick Artists' Acrylic Gesso and dump 1/2 of it into an 8 oz or largery glass jar and save it for the next batch. Then I add to the 1/2 full jar a 3.75 fl. oz bottle of casein emulsion from Richeson (The Shiva Series). I get the gesso and the casein emulson from Blick. This gesso has more tooth and less absorbancy than plain gesso and seems to work well.

Experience with the textured panels:

I have been using these textured panels for most of my paintings 12" by 16" and smaller for about 18 months and really like them. Johannes Vloothuis was doing a similar thing for a lot of his paintings using Acrylic heavy body gel mixed with gesso instead and after I told him about the Liquitex Super Heavy Gesso, he switched to it. Larry Seiler mixes pumice in with his gesso.   David Curtis (UK) paints on similar panels.

What is special about the casein in the gesso:

I started using the casein modified gesso after reading about it on a Dutch artist's website containing a lot of recipes for oil painting materials. The site for the PDF E-book of oil painting recipes is: http://www.painting-ideas-and-techniques.com/oil-painting-guide.html. Because there is no chemical bond between an acrylic dispersion (gesso) and the oil paint, it depends only on a mechanical bond. The casein (milk protein) provides a chemical bond to the oils. Toning the panel will be best with oils rather than acrylics, so that the chemical bond is maintained. An alternative would be to add some pigment or tube acrylics into the final casein modified gesso coat.

 

What your textured panel should look like:

When you have finished the panel and allowed it to dry the accompanying photo shows what the texture will look like.  To show this off in the photo, I applied some OMS thinned raw umber and wiped back with a flexible silicone spatula to accentuate the strokes.  Note the random pattern.  Don't make the texture layer too thick.   This can be used on a canvas panel or stretched canvas as well because this is just a thick gesso and very flexible.

 

[Silvana M Albano]

This information is extremely valuable! Thank you very much Stu for sharing again, specially as it is on a blog, it is easier to find once needed! I am surprised to learn of how maaany things come together with painting, it was just the paints and some brushes at the beginning.... panels, mediums, gesso, varnish, special brushes have to be added... and the list goes on and on... all new vocabulary ...and learning their exact uses. I am still wondering what to do with the paintings I have done on paper... glue them on a mdf panel? Fortunately they are in a kind of booklet at the moment... someday I'll get the courage of framing one... and THAT will be another issue to think about....

[Stuart J. Gourlay]

Betsy, thanks, but I think I will skip anymore recipes for right now.   I do like my own panels much better than anything I have bought, especially because of the ability to vary the texture.   But I am lazy also and often paint on a canvas pad and mount it on a panel if I like it.   I have used white glue (Elmer's), Yes! paste, and neutral pH glue to glue down my canvases in the past.  I now prefer Golden acrylic heavy body gel for this.  I use a brayer and then compress two panels together with clamps and weights (books) with waxed paper between.  If you paint with a lot of impasto technique, this after-mounting can be a problem; but I paint pretty thinly.  I am also a woodworker, so the table saw is a snap.   I could very easily get into making everything, because I am an inveterate DIYer, but I would never have time to paint.   I don't think you are suffering too much with your painting; it looks pretty good to me.    Stu

[Betsy Jenkins]

I spent a few months at an atelier in Baltimore, MD. The founder was a protégée of Maroger. While there, I learned how to grind pigment into paint, how to make Maroger medium (cooking lead on a stove!) and how to make and apply primer for panel using whiting. I have the recipes if you are interested. It gave me a great appreciation for the artists of the past. Their methods and materials made paintings that last. They were TRUE craftsmen --possessing knowledge and skill of a complex subject.

But I am LAZY! I made my own paints every day while up there--what a pain! And understanding chemistry--Yikes! --NOT for me. My brain locks up. And having to stop and spend a good portion of a day to make mediums and gessos and coated panels instead of spending the time learning to paint and draw was frustrating. I suppose we modern people all want everything FAST. Fast food, fast times....We are spoiled! We want results without spending a lot of time mastering the time consuming details and substance of things.

I am glad that I learned all those things. I suppose that, if I ever become as talented (translated: confident) as you are, Stu, it might be worth the extra effort to make a fine panel for a masterpiece.

But for now, since I am so new at this, I prefer the quick fix. I like just getting up rom my coffee, squeezing out the colors, dipping my brush in them, and getting to work on my cheap Fredrix cotton duck canvas and trying (make that suffering) to make a picture!

Besides, table saws are why God invented husbands. And mine has a honey-do list that will keep him busy until death do us part...

[Vladimir Gmyria]

Hi Stuart.Thank a lot for your help suggestion.The matter is that i am deciding 2 tasks.I want to know English 

and i love painting.Try to catch all tips and comments.My English not so fast but i go forward.If you have a time or possibility let give me a chance to hear you on SKYPE.As for painting will be glad to get all critique.

[Stuart J. Gourlay]

Vladimir, let me know if you need any help. Stu

[Vladimir Gmyria]

Thank you Stu for the tip.Just in time.