FREE! Video tutorials to help you learn directly from the artists
COLLECTION Volume 1
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stunning step-by-step workshops!
Use plein air skills in your art studio
Follow our professional artists and create your best art yet
VOLUME 1 REVISED EDITION
Digital Edition
Make a masterpiece from a photo in just 10 steps
Create exciting still lifes Be spontaneous with new techniques in Chinese inks
Paint striking portraits Follow Stephen Gardner’s in-depth gouache guide
Amazing fur and eyes
Top tips to depict realistic details with pastels on velour
Bitesize
Bitesize
Whether you have half an hour or an afternoon to spare, follow these quick, simple and fun tips and start experimenting with your art today!
Mix more realisticlooking colours THE MOST important lesson you can learn about how to accurately mix colour is the relationship that complementary colours have with each other. No matter what medium you use, from coloured pencils through to oil paints, being able to understand the effect these colour combinations have on each other is crucial to understanding colour mixing. When mixing colour, begin by choosing a tube colour that’s closest to the shade you’re trying to emulate in paint. Next, look at your subject’s tone to decide whether you need to make the tube colour darker or lighter. Then look at the saturation of the colour you’re attempting to mix. You can’t make the colour straight out of the tube any more vibrant, so most of the time you’ll be desaturating the colour or greying it down. This is where the alchemy of complementary colours comes into its own. Let’s take two complementary colours from the colour wheel onto our palette, to experiment with what we can achieve when we put them together.
ROB LUNN Bath, UK Rob is a self-taught painter, and loves to paint in oils. His influences are Vincent van Gogh, Caravaggio and Ilya Repin. He has taught art workshops since 2012. www.roblunn.co.uk
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Ultramarine Violet
Ultramarine Blue
Phthalo Blue
Phthalo Green
Magenta
Alizarin Crimson
Bright Green Lake
Opposite colours are complimentary
Scarlet Lake
Bright Yellow Lake Permanent Orange
Yellow Lake Deep
Yellow Lake
Be prepared The 12-step colour wheels represents 12 colours that make up the spectrum of light. Colours opposite each other on the wheel are known as complimentary and understanding the effect they have on each other when mixed is a vital element of successful colour mixing. Get into the habit of laying out your colours in a consistent order each time. This will enable you to make mixing choices quickly without having to stop to think ‘Is that a very dark blue-green or a very dark green-blue?’
Quick tips
Follow these steps...
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Grab two decent-sized dollops of complementary colours. If you ever want your greens to look more green or your reds to look more red then put some of their complementary colour next to them to provide a striking contrast in your painting. The same goes for any of the other colours opposite one another on the colour wheel.
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Start by mixing a little of the complementary colours in with each other to see the effect that they have on each other. Depending on what colours you’re using, you’ll need to judge how much to add. Some paints have higher tinting strengths, so a little dab will do. Notice how they take the punch out of each other, creating the ‘greying down’ effect.
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Taking this a step further, try greying down the red completely with the green until it becomes a 50/50 mix, then push on by adding green until it becomes the dominant colour. You can see the array of lovely rich reddy-browns and browny-greens available from just two colours. These mixes may be desaturated, but they’re still packed full of colour.
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Now we’ve pushed the red all the way through to green, try adding some other colours to the mix! I’ve tinted the desaturated mixes with a little Titanium White so you can see the subtlety of the colours more easily. Taking the mixes to their shadow shades I’ve added a little blue (present in all shadows) and balanced this off with more of each complementary colour.
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Bitesize
Get creative with edges for realistic watercolours STAGNANT-LOOKING watercolour is a common problem and a learning stage we all go through. I remember when my paintings looked dead and, frankly, rather uninteresting. In fact, I’d say “coloured in” was a better description of those pieces than “painted”. However, my so-called mistakes – where washes went a bit out of control – often turned out to be the best bits. It’s a funny old business, this painting lark! There are many ways to liven up your watercolours, but paying close attention to the way you paint the edges and boundaries in a scene has the most potential to deliver a professionallooking painting. Use this two-step process to avoid an over-controlled look, to create a more exciting image with realistic separation between objects. First, squint at your subject to identify the areas where the boundaries are blurred. Look for edges that are fuzzy; where the join is nearly impossible to see. If you can’t detect a clear edge with your eyes half-closed then don’t put one in. Instead, only mark the edges that are sharp and clear. The second part of painting blurred edges is to allow the watercolours to do some of the work for you! The trick is not to stop painting when you reach the boundary of a thing, but to change your colour and tone and carry on painting the neighbouring wash. You can then hopefully sit back and watch the washes merge and get out of control. I find that watercolours often make a better job of losing an edge than I can by prodding about with a brush.
ANDREW PITT Suffolk, UK Andrew started painting when he was 11. He is a self-taught painter who lives in Suffolk and is well known for his plein air paintings and simple style. www.andrewpitt.co.uk
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Rachel on the Seawall Watercolour on paper, 14x10in
Country Still Life Watercolour on paper, 10x14in This shows how a variety of edges – sharp, fuzzy, blurred or nonexistent – add interest and leave something for the viewer to do, too.
See less to paint more Don’t paint the things you can’t clearly see, because it won’t look realistic. Blurring the boundary between the jeans, bicycle and grass in the top painting means my wife Rachel stands in the grass not on the grass.
Quick tips
Choose the right brushes for watercolour painting BACK IN my art college days I thought a sable-hair brush was only used by rich professional artists. I didn’t realise then that they aren’t as expensive as you’d think, or that they’d make my work so much better and easier to produce. There are a few things to consider when picking a quality brush… Quality fibre Fibre options for brushes include kolinsky sable hair, red sable, mongoose, badger, squirrel, blended (synthetic and natural hair mixed) or synthetic. Because of kolinsky sable’s strength, spring, and its snap (its ability to retain its shape), it is acknowledged as the gold standard fibre for watercolour and oil brushes by artists worldwide. It holds a fine point or edge, and if it’s properly cared for (see our tip box) it will last for years. Due to the quality of the hair, these brushes hold water and paint well. Thus they give you a larger amount of colour on a brush head, enabling you to apply paint with greater continuity and flood colour onto the work without having to constantly return to the palette for more paint.
Kolinsky sable brushes helped to capture soft morning light across Morgan Porth beach without any hard transitional lines where the brush had to be re-loaded.
Manufacturing quality You can identify brushes made by hand by the size of the belly (the thickest part of the brush head). A thick belly can retain more paint, for smoother wash effects. Making a brush by hand is a highly skilled process involving many steps, including the individual picking out of any hair that’s not quite perfect (pictured top). Shape and size Choose a set of brushes in shapes and sizes to suit your painting style and subjects. Over the years I’ve evolved to working with a set of brushes that includes a Flat, several Pointed Rounds and a Rigger. In my day-to-day painting I mostly use the Pointed Rounds from Rosemary & Co series 33 range in sizes 6, 12 and 24, although a few years ago I went through a phase of only using the Flat.
TONY HOGAN Cornwall, UK An artist and tutor, Tony also organises art holidays. After art college, he embarked on a career in commercial art. He returned to painting and tutoring in the 1970s. www.hoganart.co.uk
Look after your brushes Throw away the plastic cover over the bristle head of a new brush and then keep the brushes in a bamboo roll. This enables them to breathe and stay dry, which in turn avoids insect infestations, which can damage the shape.
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Bitesize
Follow these steps...
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First of all, determine the shape you will use for your cloud of smoke. My smoke elements are often exaggerated in a snaking shape to imply movement and flow simply from the outline. Don’t feel overly bound to any reference you may have at hand – push and pull the shapes to suit your image and your tastes. I lay down Umber and Ultramarine washes over graphite on a gesso panel, finding the form through edges.
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Paint 3D clouds of billowing smoke SMOKE IS a lot of fun to paint, since you can be very free and even abstract with how its movement is treated. You can use smoke as a compositional tool, as a framing device and as a way to lead the eye around a scene. The main factor to consider is the overall shape of your smoke. Use this as your starting point before you decide how much detail you wish to put inside that shape. Also, determine what type of burning material is actually generating the smoke, as the smoke’s colour and volume will vary depending on this. Damp wood or leaves, for instance, can create an excessive amount of thicker blue-white smoke, while a small, dry wood fire can have very ephemeral and wispy black smoke. Explosions or structure fires can create huge billowing grey-black clouds. Considering this will help you make decisions about rendering. Here I’m painting a medium wood fire, with a fairly substantial smoke trail that curls and winds. I like my smoke a bit stylised in shape, because I love to play with the movement and edges of lines. Don’t be afraid to have some fun and get a bit wilder!
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The second step is to find the forms inside the main smoke shape. A smoke plume in daylight can have sky light brightening (and colouring) the top of the form, and can also possibly have uplight from the fire source illuminating its lower sides. First work out the biggest shapes near the top and the edges of the plume as the smoke begins to really spread out. This helps the picture to start to gain a three-dimensional effect. 3
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Now it’s time to consider colour. You can let the smoke go a bit blue-ish as it comes off the flames, and throw some uplight into the lower areas using thin washes of Burnt Sienna and Venetian Red. The upper areas get pale washes of Titanium White to simulate the sky light. This creates an exaggerated volumetric effect that can really look terrific in illustrations and add a lot of pleasing visual interest.
DAVE BRASGALLA Stockholm, Sweden Dave is an illustrator and graphic designer who also loves to pursue personal projects using traditional painting media. He has recently created cover and interior artwork for Riotminds games. www.pixelhuset.se
Quick tips
Follow these steps...
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Make your own DIY mahlstick by using a length of dowelling for the shaft, fitted with a cork ball at the end. Then fit the chamois leather around the cork ball and tie on a length of cord to hold it in place. When building your own, make sure you use a straight piece of dowelling for the shaft, as this is crucial in ensuring you can use the mahlstick to its full potential.
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Wield a stabilising mahlstick like a pro THE MAHLSTICK (or maulstick, as it’s also known) is a stabilising support tool used by painters when working at an easel on a canvas or a large board. Its name is derived from the Dutch word maalstok for ‘painter’s stick’, which in turn comes from the word malen, meaning ‘to paint’. When the sticks were first introduced for this purpose is unknown, but they can be found in painter’s self-portraits dating as far back as the 16th century. If you’ve never used a mahlstick before, you could find it revolutionises your time spent at the easel. They are one of those iconic artistic props, akin to a floppy beret and painter’s smock (both I blushingly admit to owning myself) but don’t underestimate this ubiquitous little branch of cliché. It’s a very handy tool to have at your disposal, for a multitude of applications, and you’ll find it props up more than just the morning after the night before. Mahlsticks are typically made up of three main elements: a long, thin shaft, resembling a walking cane, that you lean your hand or wrist on while painting; a cork ball, about the size of a ping-pong ball, fixed at the top end of the shaft, that leans on the canvas or board or hooks over the top of the easel; and a piece of protective chamois leather wrapped around the ball to stop the mahlstick from scratching, dragging or otherwise damaging your beautifully painted surface.
ROB LUNN
Rest the mahlstick directly on the canvas or hook the ball over the top of a small support or the easel. Hooking the mahlstick over enables you to position it at different angles, and to perform tricky tasks. Remember not to lean on the mahlstick too much as you could disturb your painting.
Use your Mahlstick as a handy straightedge tool as well as a rest. Hook the ball over the top of the canvas or board so you can use your non-painting hand to manoeuvre the stick to get a straight vertical line. Then simply run your brush or charcoal down the length of the shaft to create your straight line. Do this from any angle to also create horizontal or diagonal lines.
Get a travel mahlstick If you don’t fancy making your own mahlstick then why not splash out on a telescopic or two-piece mahlstick that can be easily taken on painting trips out of the studio? A half-sized mahlstick is the perfect size for a field easel!
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Bitesize
Keep watercolours fresh and loose THERE are many things that contribute to the attractive and free nature of watercolour, but here I’ll concentrate on the simplest and most basic: how I apply the paint to the paper. I’ve found the easiest way to make the paint look happy on the paper is to touch the paper once. That is, I know how I want my picture to look straightaway, and don’t plan to do any over-painting. I avoid painting anywhere twice, until I have painted everything once. And I don’t correct as I go along either– I wait until the end, when it is easier to judge the passages that haven’t quite gone to plan. Remember, we are all trying to narrow the gap between our vision and the execution of our vision.
ANDREW PITT
Follow these steps...
Fishermen’s Sheds, Suffolk An advantage of this one-wash method is I don’t have to paint in any set order, plus I remain interested and committed. It’s an enjoyable way of painting.
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The purpose of my preliminary drawing is to ensure the image fits the paper. As my aim – and I don’t always succeed – is to go for the end straightaway, I can start anywhere I like. I don’t paint to a set formula, but I do like to begin somewhere small and easy.
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I decide to leave the sky until later. I like to feel my way before tackling large areas. I continue to paint the sheds and some of the greens, all the while going for the final look in one wash. I also keep varying my colour to add interest.
Quick tips
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The sky is painted in one go, on dry paper. Starting at the top I work down and across. I use the paper to separate the cloud shapes – I find the flecks of unpainted paper add life and movement. I think they give an open, honest look to the painting.
Finally, I add selected detail – masts, figures, shadows and texture. I avoid tidying up my picture, in fact, I often ‘muck it up’. I think this adds life – I certainly don’t start painting everywhere again. That is guaranteed to muddy fresh washes.
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Bitesize
This detail from a painting shows a light shaft in a cloudy sky. Above the light there is a hard edge, softened away at either side.
Follow these steps... 1
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To practise the technique, mix up some paint on your palette in a relatively dark tone. Using a strong colour, such as blue or brown rather than yellow – you’ll easily be able to see whether you’re getting the effect right. Use two brushes to help you with timing– have the second brush ready, just dampened (not dripping) with clean water.
Create soft edges in watercolour USING soft edges alongside hard ones is a magic combination used in watercolour. You’ll see it used all the time in the hands of experienced painters, creating areas where a subject becomes ‘lost and found’ or, in other words, where it seems to merge in places with its surroundings and not in others. In the example above, I painted a section of far-off cloud with a hard-edged bottom to suggest its heavier, shaded underside. But the shaft of light coming down from beyond the cloud was portrayed by softening this darker area away into the white of the paper on both sides. There are a few ways to merge hard edges into soft ones. One is to wet an area of paper first and then paint into that wet area, beginning from a dry area. There are times when this will work well, but often an alternative method will control the situation better, which is to paint the area of colour first, followed by ‘bleeding away’ that area into nothing (or perhaps into another area of colour). This method is often approached incorrectly by a beginner, leading to runbacks or the edge not softening out smoothly. The three-part process to the right shows the approach needed to avoid these issues.
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Using the brush you mixed it with, fully loaded, paint a small area of colour quickly, so it is very wet on the paper. This area of paint is currently entirely hard edged. The photo above shows this stage completed, and starts stage 3.
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3 JEM BOWDEN Bristol, UK Jem paints and teaches watercolour full time, with a focus on landscapes. He gives demonstrations, runs workshops, and tutors on residential painting holidays. http://bit.ly/jembowden
Pick up the second brush. This is the important bit… Put it down first on the area of paper that you want the paint to soften (or bleed) into. Press it into the paper to dampen it, moving from here along the surface into the wet paint. When your brush joins the two areas, lift it off and watch the previously hard edge soften away into the dampened area. Repeat the steps with different wetnesses of paint mix, and a different dampness of the second, clean water brush.
Quick tips Two simple images show how the textured Saunders Waterford, left, gives less defined detailing, while the one on hot pressed Bockingford Watercolour paper, below, is white with sharper edges.
Choose the right paper for your watercolour painting THERE are three main considerations when choosing the right watercolour paper for your painting. These are quality, weight and texture. Choose the right one for the job and half the work is done. As with your style of painting, there is no right or wrong, it’s just a question of what produces the results you require and feel comfortable with. Quality The best watercolour papers are made from either wood pulp or rag-content composition on mould machines. Wood pulp, such as Bockingford, is less expensive, generally whiter and has a less absorbent surface. Rag papers, such as Saunders Waterford, will look slightly off-white and absorb the paint more readily. Handmade special-texture papers are also available but we will not look at those for now.
A wet wash on lightweight paper, showing the deep undulations preventing control of the painting. Clean edges and straight lines are impossible in this case.
Weight All papers are manufactured and sold by weight, measured either in pounds or grams per square metre. The most popular art papers are 140lb (300gsm), 200lb (425gsm) and 300lb (638gsm). The heavier the paper, the more water can be applied without ‘cockling’ (see box, right). Texture There are three standard machine-made options. The smoothest surface is hot pressed (HP). Cold pressed (CP or NOT) offers a slightly raised surface. Meanwhile, rough has a textured surface. If you want to paint fine detail you would probably opt for an HP surface. Working on seascapes or atmospheric creations I prefer rough paper. CP has a nice balance between the two for more general artwork.
TONY HOGAN
The secret of stretching Correct stretching of paper prevents cockling (the paper rippling when it is wet) and realigns the fibres of the paper, improving the flow and control of paint. Remember that a 300gsm paper needs eight minutes of complete submersion in water before being taped with gummed tape on a board to dry. 638gsm needs 30 minutes.
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Bitesize
My edges became too strong as I coloured the forms, so I had to carefully pull out most of those dark accumulations of pigment. Merged shapes, colours and the outlines of forms convey this boat and its occupants, making a strong compositional base to build detail onto.
Lift off! An effective watercolour technique is to create detail by lifting out areas of pigment. Use a brush with water to carefully wet the areas to be lifted, then daub off the pigment with a paper towel. Experiment to discover what different results can be produced.
Create more interesting compositions A REWARDING technique that can drive your compositions in new directions is to push compositional elements of the same value together and then let the colour flow freely throughout the new, more complex shapes that are formed. You can even lift out bits of pigment within these areas to create lovely effects. This is a good mental exercise because it encourages us to think in terms of the overall composition, rather than potentially getting lost by focusing too much on single details.
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In this scene, I thought that the boat, its sail and passengers made a nice arrangement that could be combined into a single, more complex shape. The key here is deciding which details can be safely omitted – for instance, the silhouettes of the passengers is all that’s needed to convey them. We read their forms easily as people, with almost no detail given. I’ve let the general value of the boat hull bleed up into the sail, into the passengers, and also down into the
waves. I pulled out a bit of pigment along the upper edge of the boat, so that it would be clearer, plus that element has such a nice curve. Taking the shapes further, I would probably darken the main sail area all the way up. At any rate, it’s now ready to go in and I can polish it where needed, as the basic forms are now strong and the image already makes a distinctive and recognisable impression.
DAVE BRASGALLA
This painting employs a lot of wet-in-wet technique. The cloud shadow over the land in the background was done following the three steps below.
Quick tips
Get to grips with the wet-in-wet technique WET-IN-WET is a technique that can often cause frustration. This method is where additional paint is added into a wet section of the paper. Problems usually arise from an inconsistent amount of water in the combined mixes. Paint may disperse too wildly, or irregularities (such as ‘runbacks’ – see box below) may result. These effects can be desirable, but often they’re not wanted! Once an area of paper has been dampened by paint or water, usually not much extra water will be needed in any paint that is added into it. If the paper isn’t heavy, or pre-stretched onto board, it may form bumps. Experiment by adding different dilutions into different wetnesses of paper. Timing is important. Adding undiluted tube paint into a wet area helps gain control with the method, so it’s a good starting point. The threestep example illustrates this.
JEM BOWDEN
What is a ‘runback’? Runback is also known as a cauliflower or bloom, and is often a frustration! It occurs when laying a wash, and especially with wetin-wet, if the paper is inconsistently damp. A wetter part pushes pigment at the edge of a dryer part into a characteristic wavy line.
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Follow these steps...
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To create soft-edged but controlled marks the paint that is added must have a lower water content than the area it is added into. As a quick exercise, you can squeeze out a small blob of tube paint. Mix and quickly lay down an area of wash (a few inches square), using a very diluted mix of paint and a fully loaded brush.
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Straightaway, hold your brush against an absorbent rag or kitchen paper, so almost all moisture is taken out of it. Then, onto the tip of your brush pick up a generous amount of paint and work it evenly into the tip using a dry section of your palette.
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Now, while the wash is still wet, paint some marks into it and see how the paint reacts. Here I’ve painted a tree shape – the effect is that it blurs, as if out of focus. However, the paint dispersal is minimal, the shape holds up and the effect is therefore controlled.
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Bitesize
Achieve unique textures in your oil paintings
JIM PAVELEC Chicago, Illinois, USA Jim was a freelance fantasy illustrator for more than 15 years. Over the past few years he’s transitioned into creating dark surreal fine art. www.jimpavelec.com
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WHEN people think of creating texture in a painting, they usually think of additive techniques, meaning those in which you add paint (or found objects) to the piece. An approach I really enjoy that creates fascinating textures is a subtractive one. This means that you apply paint to the surface, and then use something to lift paint up. You can use a variety of things to remove paint from your painting surface, such as brushes loaded with thinner, or paper towels, plastic wrap, palette
knives or scrapers – just about anything you can think of, really! A fun technique I recently discovered uses a kneaded eraser. I get six or seven large kneaded erasers and combine them to create one large eraser. I press the eraser into the surface of various stones and fossils I have collected. This creates organic textures in the eraser. I then press the eraser onto a board with wet oil paint on it. The peaks in the textured eraser pick up the paint, so when I remove the eraser I am left with a very unique texture.
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Quick tips
Follow these steps...
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I begin by laying in a thin layer of acrylic paint (Raw Sienna and Raw Umber in this case) on a small gessoed panel in a quick and painterly fashion. This piece is going to be a surreal portrait, so I paint thickly in oils to describe the shape and features of the head. I also apply thick oil paint around the top of the head. 2
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My goal is to use the subtractive eraser technique to create a textural transition between the head and the background. I press my eraser into a large piece of green malachite, which creates wonderful shapes in the eraser. I then plot where to place the eraser on the painting to get the maximum effect. 3
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I press the eraser firmly into the areas around the head (but not so hard that it completely flattens the eraser). When I remove the eraser, the oil paint has lifted and the thin acrylics beneath are revealed in a kind of ethereal texture that is perfect for the mood I want to create in this piece.
Gathering materials If you plan to use this technique on a regular basis, you want to build up a collection of items to create the eraser textures. They don’t have to be just rocks and fossils, though. To create more linear textures, you can use old computer or mechanical parts. There’s no limit to what you can use. Be creative!
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Bitesize
Follow these steps... For a core shadows lighting key 1
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Since I’m concerned with light and shade here, I try to merge areas that will share shadows, and focus less on rendering detail in those areas. Look for values that are already close and join them across objects. Background shapes especially will become simple outlines containing a single tone.
My grandfather looking on, when he helped to build Michigan’s Mackinac Bridge in the late 50s.
How to convey bright sunlight with watercolour TO CREATE the effect of strong sunlight, start with locating core shadows – the darkest areas of shadow in your picture. Look around your scene and identify every place where these shadows occur. Don’t get hung up on individual objects – just look at where the deep shadows are happening. Often these areas will flow together across several objects, so don’t be afraid to join the shadows together. Start painting by laying in these core shadows throughout the scene, and try to minimise transitions to lighter values. The result will be a dark/light interplay that already conveys the essence of your scene. This is how our eyes see in bright light, especially when coming from a dimmer environment – we tend to interpret everything as a high-contrast play of light and shadow. This will create a key that can be used to build your image. Work back up the value scale from your core shadow value. For each element, ask yourself where it falls between the core shadow and your lightest value. Where possible, push the light values together in the same way, tending towards the light end of the scale.
DAVE BRASGALLA
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With the dark core shadows on the figure laid in without much transitional edge shading, we already have a feeling of bright light. We’ve established a value range to work between – darkest to lightest – and can begin filling in the rest of the areas based on this range.
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Now it’s large fields of mid-tone colours. Thinking of each object as a pattern of shadow and light helps point me to rendering solutions. I use watercolour pencils for details and to adjust some of the deeper shadow colours that weren’t consistent enough. This will help unify the various elements.
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Quick tips
The fastest way to prepare a smooth panel for painting I WANT to share the fastest method I use for gessoing a panel and getting a smooth finish. All it takes is a few tools from the DIY store and a little finesse. Overall the process is much like icing a cake – we’re just icing a panel with gesso! Once your materials are ready, the whole process takes just a few minutes. Let the panel dry for an hour or so – as long as it’s no longer cool to the touch, it should be dry enough and ready to be sanded smooth and put into service. When spreading on the gesso, it really does help to cover the entire panel. It might seem like bare spots will get covered during the spreading process, but it might be necessary when you’re smoothing to tap the gesso with a taping knife to fill any voids (usually near the edges). If an edge appears from the blade on panels larger than the taping knife, a lighter pass in the opposite direction will usually smooth it all out. This is where a little patience and finesse come in handy.
AARON MILLER Chicago, Illinois, USA Aaron is an award-winning illustrator best known for his fantasy paintings for games such as Magic: the Gathering. Oils are his favourite medium. www.aaronbmiller.com
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Follow these steps...
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First I prepare my panel for the gesso. I use an extra-fine sanding block to rough up the surface, then wipe with a damp sponge to clean off the residue. My panel is smooth one-eighth-inch hardboard, which is smooth on both sides. I have my panels pre-cut to standard frame sizes.
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I use a grooved adhesive spreader to apply the gesso (I prefer the toothed kind but a flat one will work just as well). I make sure the whole panel is covered. I use professionalgrade gesso because it’s thicker, so I use less of it overall. It’s perfect for this technique.
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I now use a taping knife to smooth the gesso, pulling it first in one direction across the panel, then the opposite direction. A few passes will do the trick. Apply just enough pressure to smooth the grooved surface – too much and you’ll scrape off all the gesso. To finish, scrape any excess from the sides.
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