Small Head Studies

I recently bought a sample pack of New Traditions Art Panels to try out some different surfaces. New Traditions makes fine art canvas panels which can be ordered with a wide range of linens and canvases mounted to them. Since this was my first time ordering from them, I opted for the pack of six different canvas types at a size of 8 x 10" to take each one for a test drive with a small head study. They range from very smooth to very coarse. I really liked almost all of the surfaces, but my favorites were probably the A600 surface and the C15 surface. Both of those are acrylic primed linens.

For the past five years, I have been painting on nothing but smooth oil primed linens like Claessens 13 and Raphael's portrait linen. And I have gotten very used to the ultra smooth slickness of those surfaces. So these New Traditions acrylic primed surfaces were a surprisingly nice change of texture. I've been wanting to loosen up my finished style more lately, and rougher acrylic linens allow for a bit more flexibility because the tooth of the canvas holds onto paint a little more strongly, and I can do more effects like finger swiping, blending and thick impasto strokes at any point during the painting.

Smooth oil primed linens like Raphael's and Claessens oil primed surfaces are a bit more temperamental and require more layering and drying before being able to gracefully smooth out an area. If you brush too hard or try to swipe with your finger, you tend to rub off all the paint back to the original white of the canvas. But these NT panels were a little more friendly to me in that respect.

Check out New Traditions Art Panels here.

Anyways, here are a few of my recent 8 x 10" studies on the NT panels. I spent about 2 hours on each one.