Transcripts
1. Introduction: You think of acrylic painting, you probably picture
canvas first. But what if wood or paper worked even better for your
next masterpiece? Hi, I'm Cornelia, a full time mixed media
artist from Austria. Whether you are beginner with acrylics or a more
experienced painter, this class will help you choose the right surface for
your style and technique. You'll discover the pros
and cons of canvas, paper, and wood, how to
prepare each one properly. And how your choice of
surface can completely change the texture look
and feel of your painting. By the end, you'll know exactly which surface to pick
for your next project, saving you time, frustration, and money at the art
store. Let's dive in.
2. Your Class Project: For the class project,
I want you to take a picture of something that
you have already created. Then you need to answer
three questions. First of all, what was the surface that you
created this on? What did you like about it and what didn't
you like about it? Thirdly, what is the
surface that you would love to try
next? That's it. As a bonus, you can then later when you have
tried your new surface, upload another picture
of what you've created. I always love to
see your projects.
3. Acrylic Painting on Paper: So when it comes to
painting on paper, you have a lot of options again. So paper is not paper. So for acrylic painting, you can use any kind
of study paper. The only problem that you
could run into is dropping. And I think this is
the paper that's probably the thinnest or
cheapest one that I paint on, but I like to use
it for studies. It's actually watercolor paper, and it has 200 em. This cheaper watercolor paper, you have to tap down
for it not to work too badly or at least
to dry almost flat. And here's a piece of a more sturdier acraic
painting paper, which I have also taped down, and there's hardly any warping. In fact, you don't really
need to tap it down. It works very slightly, but this is something that you
when you would frame this, you could easily get it flat. When you put a mat on top, it will just put it flat. Or if you frame
it without a mat, you would need to spray it a little bit on the back
and then leave it under a stack of something
heavy like a stack of books for it to dry
really flat again. These I have actually painted on this 400 SM paper
without taping it down. I also like to cut
up my papers into the small pieces so that I can create these
small artworks. They were pretty
flat, but because of the I think the
general air humidity, they start to warp a little bit when they
are lying around. So as I said, before you
would want to frame them, you can just slightly humidify them on the back and
then press them. This is actually pretty thin and I use it for study
and it actually, it held up pretty well. You can see that it's
a little bit warped, but if you're just
playing around, you can use actually any paper. This was, for example, a
mixed media paper that has 270 FM it has a completely
different property. I like it sucks up
a lot of paint. With the dedicated
acrylic painting paper, the paint sits more on top of the paper and doesn't
soak too much into it. So this is from Kansan
It's a 400 SM paper. So this is the fabriano apitura. It's 400 SM, and
you can, of course, get it in smaller pads, but you can also get it in these really large
sheets of paper. I think this one can
get very large as well. And there are obviously
other brands. A have some mixed media papers. These are usually not as heavy. They are around 300 most
of the time. They're okay. The good thing in this case is that it's glued on the side, so it helps to dry flat again. If I would want to
create something that I would maybe want to frame, I would probably go with either the Csa acrylic paper or with the Fabiano
Pitura paper. So the advantage
of using paper is definitely that you
can easily store that. You can make tons of studies and you don't
need a lot of space. It's easily accessible, but it's inexpensive and that way it's
less precious to paint on. You don't have that hurdle
of feeling, oh, my gosh, this is this canvas
and it cost me like so many bucks now it has to turn into
something really good. So the cons of paper
are that it tends to warp and buckle when it
gets all that fluidity. But you can influence that a lot with your
choice of paper. When you go for the higher
quality 400 Cheesm, acrylic painting paper or
maybe watercolor paper, you will have less trouble
than cheaper paper, of course. Framing can therefore
lead to additional costs, and this also depends on the size of the paper
and whether you need a custom made mount or
a non reflective glass. Do we need to prepare the
paper for painting on? No, actually, we don't
you are going for a different surface texture or you want to add a
protective layer so that the paint doesn't
soak so much into the paper or that paper then in the next layers
doesn't warp so much, you can add a layer of gesso. Gesso gives it that extra tooth. It gives it a little
bit of a rough surface, and it can also influence
the outcome of the artwork. Let me show you an example. This paper is actually a poster that had a minor issue
in the printing. I covered it with gesso
and then I used it to experiment on
with mixed media. The black is actually acrylic, but I think the blue green, I think they're tempora. I'm not quite sure it could
be watercolor as well. So what you can see
very well is that the chaso made the
surface texture, where the brush marks left
these ridges and valleys. The very fluid transparent
paint ran into these structures
and you can still see the brush marks of
the aso in the outcome. That can give a really
interesting effect. You can of course also do
that on other surfaces, but in this case, um it
works really well on paper. The reason why
this paper doesn't warp is that it was
actually laminate, it had this thin um, mat plastic film on top. It was covered against humidity. I thought I would just add Jaso to have a little bit more of a tooth.
You can hear that. It's really rough and paint on it and just use it
as paper to experiment on. One thing that you need to
take care of when you work on large sheets like that is that they still
walk a little bit, they bend and you when
you want to work upright, have them vertically on the
wall and not on the floor, then you need to stick
it to your wall. You need to take a tape that's pretty strong because otherwise, it tends to come off the wall
and it has happened to me, it just has fallen off
the wall overnight. And it has to do, of course, with the surface
use ticket, too. This is a little bit rough, so the tape doesn't
deere so well. So when I use this paper on another piece and I
taped it to a whiteboard, that worked a lot better. It stuck really well. So that is something to
consider when you're working large because maybe
when it's not completely dry, then it falls off the
wall and onto your floor, it's a mess and you
don't want to have that. So make sure you use
strong tape and really secure it to the surface so it can stay and dry
in this position.
4. How to Paint on Wood: Okay, so the next thing we
want to talk about is wood. We normally use plywood, but it's wood that consists of many layers that
are glued together. This protects the
wood from warping. Mine are custom made by a timber wholesaler
in my hometown, and I could only get
them in 9 millimeters, which is quite thick,
but they could also be just 5
millimeters thick. A friend of mine has even used plywood with just 3 millimeters. This is the type that
is normally used for fret work at school for
these craft projects. These boards come
completely unprimed, so you need to prepare
them before painting. So how do we prepare
these wood pens? We would want to add a
layer of gloss medium. So that the wood is a
little bit protected from the moisture and it's also supposed to keep
any substances from the wood from leaking into your paint and
discoloring your artwork. The most important
aspect in this, I think, is keeping
it from warping. So what you want to do is
you want to do this on both sides so that we have
equal tension on both sides. Then you also need to chesso it. So you can use
something that's called a white primer or, you know, chesso which is basically acrylic paint that has a little bit more of a
grid, so it's rough. I usually cover it with
chesso just on one side. Because my panels are so thick, I don't have the problem
of warping so much, but maybe if you
have thinner panels, it would be better
to always do it on both sides so that
the wood is treated equally on each side
and doesn't have more humidity or tension on
one side than the other. Thing with these panel
is that you then have to find a way how
you can hang them. Here, I've attached
a piece of wood to the wooden panel with wood glue and then attach
the wiring to it. This gives it some distance from the wall and casts
a small shadow, which actually looks quite nice. So this is another
example of wood panel, and this one I want to
put into a floater frame, so I need to add something to make it
a little bit thicker because these frames
are usually made for the thickness of canvases. So I prop it up with a
piece of wood and then I put it into the
frame and I need to secure it from the
back with a screw. Cradled panels are
another option. They are basically
a thin panel that is seamlessly attached
to a wooden frame. This prevents the panel from warping and makes the
painting more stable. It also has the advantage
that you can easily attach the wiring or a
sawtooth hanger to it. You can also paint the edges and hang the picture
without a frame. This one is a fairly
inexpensive one, and that is why it's made of MDF board instead of plywood. MDF boards are not
as good as plywood, because if you scratch
into the surface, any humidity can make the
wood fibers swell up. What I've also recently tried is these panels that have that
are probably also NDF boards, but they have canvas
glued on top. The canvas is already
attached to the panel in a way that it's glued down in a way but
it doesn't come off. These are pretty thin. They are also just
3 millimeters, actually you can see that I have actually used a
lot of border on these and it seems There is
hardly any warping. Here, when I push them here,
it doesn't make a sound. So I think because here the
water ran under the panel, it did warp a little bit. As you can see, you
can see the effect of that the MDF board, how it soaps up the water. It's not really optimal. But other than that,
it's a great way. It doesn't take
up so much space. The advantage of these
panels is that they are not as heavy as
my thick boards, and you could actually just hang them with adhesive hooks, at least in this size. So these are so
called canvas boards. The difference to the canvas
panels is that in this case, a canvas is wrapped
across the edge. Whereas here, you can
see the material, and here you can see the canvas. Thing is these are
very cheap ones that I bought at $1 store just to try them out for
my kids workshop. The canvas is wrapped
across the edge and then it is glued down with
a piece of paper. You have to be careful when
you put that into a wet area, like when you use
floyd paint and then it seeps under your board, I think it will
definitely start to warp. Right now, they look
pretty straight. But I would not testify to
this staying as flat as it is. But still, it's a very
inexpensive surface. It's obviously a
triple prime and it's a cotton canvas with 290 GSM. So it's definitely worth
a try and you could easily hang these just with
an adhesive hook as they are. So it's maybe a
nice alternative to just using paper and having something that you actually don't need to frame,
but you could also. Put it, it's thin
enough that you could probably put it inside
a frame as well. So wood is a rigid surface, and that can be a pro and a con. It really depends on what
you like to paint on. Some people like that
it doesn't give, but some people like the
flexibility of a canvas. So what you can do on wood is you can actually
scratch into it. You can use metal tools to
really take off the paint. You can actually use sandpaper to take off
some of the paint, like sharp things, you could use a cutter and
actually cut into it. Especially when it's plywood,
everything is possible. I would be careful
when it's an MDF board because when you get the
humidity into the MDF board, it starts to soak up and becomes a little
bit larger then. So I wouldn't scratch too
much into an MDF board, but with plywood,
you can do that. So the cons of wood are
maybe that it's quite heavy, especially when it gets larger, and you have to think
of a way of how you can attach it to
some kind of wiring. Also when you're
working on it and you don't yet have
the wiring on, you mostly have to work on it either propped up
against the wall or lying flat because
having it here in the size, you either have to have
a ledge or something to put it on that is eye level, or you'd have to
have the wiring, but I usually attach
the wiring only after I finished the painting
because while I paint, I want to be able to turn
it around and I'm not quite sure of the orientation during the painting process,
that sometimes changes. I only attach the
wiring in the end, that might be a
little bit of a con. But other than that,
wood is a great surface to work on and I can
really recommend to try.
5. Canvas Options for Acrylics: Let's talk about canvas. Canvas is probably the
most common material when it comes to painting, and it can be used in a
lot of different ways. You can use it stretched,
unstretched, primed, unprimed, and as we have already covered, sometimes it's glued
to a board so that it combines a stiff backing with
the surface of a canvas. First, let's talk about what it means if the canvas is
primed or unprimed. So canvas is basically
a piece of fabric. It's usually made
from cotton or linen, and this one is 100% cotton and about 300 grams/square meter, and it's completely unprimed. So when you have this
unprimed canvas, you can also buy these stretcher bars and
build your own frames. And then you fix the
canvas on top of that. When you buy canvas, it's either sold like
that in this huge pack, it's pretty heavy actually, or it's sold in a
roll like this. And then it can
still be unprimed. But in this case, it's
prime. You can see that. So here it's white and
here's the natural fabric. So here it has already
been covered with gesso. So a primed canvas is one that is covered with
several layers of eso. I usually do just two coats, but I also thin my chao a little because then it's much easier to spread without leaving
brush strokes. What happens to
the canvas during the process is that it starts to shrink a
little and stretch, and that is actually
a good thing. Canvas is really versatile because it has the whole thing, like the whole pack
has a lot of weight, but it's like 10 meters. That's a lot of fabric. But on the painting itself,
it's not as heavy. So Canvas is really great
when you want to paint big. This painting here behind me
is 1 meter times 1.4 meters, and this one is just 30 by 30, and this one is as small
as ten by 10 centimeters, they all are canvas
on stretcher frings. Canvases as small as these, I would never do myself
because it's fiddly work and they are actually quite
inexpensive in that size. What's nice about
them is that you now have this edge
that you can paint, and then they are already
finished paintings that you can hang as they are without
worrying about finding a frame. That's really one of
the great benefits of using stretched canvas. When the stretch of
bearing gets larger, you also need to have
these in between pieces so that it does not
become lopsided or slanted, like they stay in
the right angle, it helps that and it also gives
the frame more stability. This starts usually at about
80 times 80 centimeter, which is the painting size. That's when they automatically
start to put in a cross. What I've been doing recently is I have been putting
some canvas on my floor and actually painted on the floor on a huge
piece of canvas. Then later on, I have
chosen a part that I found frameworthy and I've
cut it out and I have put it on my own
stretch of frame. This is a smaller size. This is 50 by 50 centimeters, so we don't need the
cross crossbility. As you can see, I've just
used the painted canvas. This was one of the pre primed
canvases from the roll. And I've stretched
it after I painted. That's a neat way of doing it because you have
this larger surface, you could roll it up if you
don't like it, store it away. And if there's pot
that you like, you can stretch it on
a stretch of frame, and then you also would
apply some kind of wiring. I like to use these kind
of dearings with the wire, but you could also fix
something here to hang it up. Why would you want to
stretch your own canvases? For me, the main reason was
a financial one because the large canvases
get really expensive and I like to work on
many at the same time. I like to work in series, and I want my material
to feel non precious. If I feel the material
is super expensive, I have to really invest
money into this material, so it feels precious
and it feels like this hoy white surface that has to become
something amazing. That doesn't really
work for my process. It puts too much pressure on me. I started to stretch
my own canvases because I didn't
calculate it exactly, but it was about half the price. If you just considered material, you would have to work your
own time would have to be put out of the equation because if you
count in the work time, it it's not so good anymore because it takes a lot of time to
prep the canvas. You have to cut out
the right sizes, you have to put together the stretcher frames
in a right angle, and then you have to stretch it, then you have to prime
it at least two times, and that really takes some time. But rather if you have
the time to do that, it's also a nice
it's a nice thing to have control of the full
process of your product. Then I can absolutely recommend
doing it for yourself. But yeah, you need the
time and space to do that. Another reason why
you would want to stretch your own cavas is for quality because you have full control
of the quality. You can choose the
fabric you want to put on the canvas
and you can choose how many times you want to prime it because maybe you
don't want it to so smooth. When you just prime it once, it stays a little bit rougher
and I actually like that. So for this painting, I
stretched the canvas myself. Here, the canvas was almost
too small for this frame. Normally, you would want to have more wiggle room
to staple it on, but I think I used
a leftover piece that just wasn't any larger. What I mainly wanted
to show you with this piece is that
the surface is partially pretty
rough and I really like to work on
that rough surface. When you buy pre
stretched canvases, what you want to
look out for is that the stretcher bars look stable because when
they are very thin, it can warp more easily,
and that's what happens. You can already see it here. So when I hold up my
stretcher bar next to that, it's about 1 centimeter
wider than the one here. I've seen one of my students, she bought a canvas at
$1 store and it had a stretcher bar that was
even slimmer than this one. And then it gets a
little bit flimsy. Also what I would
look out for is that the canvas is wrapped
around the stature bar. So you have these I don't
know how they are called, things that are used to fix it are on the backside
and not on the sth. Because that's one of the
big advantages that you can use it unframed and you don't
want to have like these. They are not nails. You don't want to have these on the side. One of the advantages
of canvas is that it's so flexible when it comes
to size and weight. So it's not as heavy as wood, and it's also very easily
presentable in comparison to, for example, paper because paper needs to be framed
or there needs to be some kind of way how
you can present it. But a canvas, you can actually just hang on a
nail and you're done. One disadvantage of using a
canvas is that it's a thin, flexible, but still
fragile material. You can use heavy tools on it, and this has never
happened to me before on a painted painting, it can rip. So I wanted on this painting, I wanted to add a mark
with a stablo woody, which is not a super sharp tool. So I wanted to use this woody. I had this slide angle here, and I wanted to make a mark. And I wend at it from, like, I had it lying on the floor and maybe I just because
it was on the floor, I put too much pressure, and now it's ripped. See that here. It has a rib. Which
is pretty bad. I've done a little
bit of research, and most people recommend not to go ahead with a
painting that has a rib. There are ways to
fix it, of course. I mean, people do
that for a job, but I really don't. I'm not really good at it and I would not put this up for sale. I've only once ripped my canvas. When I stretched it over the stretcher bar
with this tool, which used to pull this fabric a little bit
so you have more tension. And as you can imagine, it has pretty sharp edges. And I was putting on a lot of
pressure and let it ripped. But on a painting with a woody, I would not have
expected this to happen. So I was like, Oh, my gosh. Just before I want
to film this class. Happens. But anyway, so that's a little bit
of a disadvantage. When you want to go add your painting with
a lot of vigor, you might want to paint on
wood or you would want to fix the unstretched canvas
on a wood plate or on a wood surface so that you can paint on like that or you
have it on your floor. One more thing to
mention is that you can also do a lot of
texture work on a canvas. So even though it's
not a rigid surface, it holds up really well. You have to use a lot of the acrylic primer in your texture paste so
that it's really stuck. So you can actually see these bumps on the
backside of the canvas, and that shows that it
adapts to the texture paste, so it really sticks
to it very well. When you buy a stretched canvas, it is usually prime. So it is covered with
multiple layers of chaso which is basically
white acrylic paint, but with a little bit more grid. It gives you that great surface
for the paints to adhere, it keeps the paint from
soaking into the fabric, and it also gives you that white background
so that your paints can really be very vivid and
you can have pure colors. But more recently
there have also been stretched canvases that are unprimed because it has become popular to paint on
these unprimed canvases. The properties are
a little bit more different like the paints
soak into the fabric. And it gives a different effect. And some people even
just paint parts and leave other parts completely natural in the
natural fabric color. So I'm not super experienced
with unprimed canvases, but I have tried for myself
a couple of years ago, and I had my own
canvas stretched on this stretcher bar and then I painted on it without
priming it first. I did not like the
process very much. What happened was
that the painting, you don't have that
white background, all the colors are a
little bit more subdued. Because when they
are transparent, they mix with the background and also the soak into the fabric, so they are not as
vibrant as they would have been on a
white chesso surface. And you can also see
that on the back that the paint has
soaked into the fabric, and now everything is
stretched flat again. But during the painting process, you have to think
about it like that. The canvas is pure cotton or whatever fabric
and whenever fabric that's that's not treated in any way comes into contact with water,
it actually shrinks. When I was painting parts, it started to shrink in parts
and it started to create all these fols and
it was quite uneven. During the process.
But after a while, everything when it dry and I
had painted the whole thing, it started to even out again. What you also can do is when you have that unevenness
of humidity, you can always spray
it on the back. You can also do that with brand canvases and bought canvases. When it's too loose, you can spray it on the back, and then the whole
canvas shrinks a little bit and gets
more pressure on it. So yeah. I still want to
experiment a little bit more with painting
on unprimed canvas, but I haven't done it a lot. I've just done this series of three and that's a while ago. That is something definitely worth trying and
experimenting with.
6. What’s the Best Surface for You : Have now covered
canvas, wood and paper. Which of these you decide to choose really depends
on the outcome, your intent for your
painting session, and also your style or the
technique you want to use. For example, if you want to have that freedom of just
experimenting and sketching, paper is a great choice
because it's inexpensive, it's easy to store. You can create hundreds
of pieces without needing an additional
storage units somewhere. Wood is a great surface
when you want to try some more texture techniques like subtractive techniques
like scratching, sanding, if you just like the feeling of having
that rigid surface to paint on Canvas is really a great combination
of all of these, you can use it in
very different ways. You can use it stretched. You can even stretch it over wood and so that you have that rigidity
of the background, you don't have that bounce. You can use it
primed and unprimed. That will also influence
the way the paints react. I've created a quick overview of the pros and cons of each
material so that you can gauge where you want to land with your choice and
what you want to achieve.
7. Final Thoughts: Well done for
finishing this class. I hope this class has given
you a good overview of the different painting surfaces that you can use for
acrylic painting. After all, it's a matter of experimenting and
finding your preferences and also adapting
the materials to the project you want to
implement and create. If you enjoyed the class, I would highly appreciate if
you could leave a review. It's very great
feedback for myself, but it also helps other students see if the class is the
right fit for them. Also don't forget to follow
me here and Skillshare, so you'll get notified
whenever I publish a new class or the
giveaway or have other interesting
tips and information to share with if you're
interested in learning more, definitely check out my other
classes here on Skillshare. I have a very cool
class on creating small abstract series
and a couple of classes that focus very
much on a playful, process oriented
approach when it comes to your creative practice. Thank you for taking this
class and I hope I'll see you soon in an out of my classes
or maybe over on YouTube, happy creating and BiPonO.
Cornelia Zelinka-Bodis, Mixed Media Artist
