Choosing the Right Surface with Dianna Shyne

Dianna Shyne, Ep.82, uses two primary surfaces. And she has a very simple way she chooses which she reaches for.

For Shyne, the choice is based on size.

For small paintings, she loves the smooth masonite surface that's been treated.

For larger work she uses stretched canvas with a lot of gesso.

While size is the first consideration, there’s also the matter of texture.

Shyne likes to work on smooth surfaces, and while the masonite gives her her preferred smoothness out of the gate, it's too heavy when scaled up.

That’s when she turns to canvas…but there’s a problem. Canvas doesn’t come smooth.

To get a smooth surface, Shyne will add several layers of gesso to her canvas to disrupt the regular tooth of the material.

Shyne wants as little of the canvas tooth to show through as possible. After all, she wants her brushstrokes to be the main texture in her painting, not the canvas underneath.

Learn more about the materials you’ll want to create great acrylic paintings by listening to the whole conversation with Dianna Shyne. Click Ep.82 in the @learntopaintpodcast bio.

Put it to Practice:

What do you want from your surface? Some artists really love the tooth of canvas. It's why they paint on it.

But others, like Shyne, want a smooth surface where her brush marks are the only visible texture.

The great thing about being a modern painter is you have options when it comes to your surfaces.

Even watercolorists have different papers with different levels of texture. And with acrylic gels and mediums, you can make a surface be almost anyway you'd like it on the texture front for both acrylic and oil painters.

Learning your preferences takes a bit of time. And ironically, the more you jump around, the longer it will take.

Pick a surface and try it (and mainly it) for a while. Time spent with a single type of surface will help you differentiate what is a surface characteristic and what is maybe a brush characteristic or a paint characteristic.

All surfaces will have pros and cons. But if you stick with one for a while, you'll begin to understand its strengths and weaknesses for you as an artist. Then you can try another one with the same focused attention and begin to learn which you prefer.