Oil Painting on Wood

A couple years back, an acquaintance of mine approached me with an idea. He was into woodworking, and what he had in mind involved a couple of slabs of cherry wood glued together into a square cutting board shape. It would have been perfect as a small cutting board, but that’s not what he had in mind.

“I was wondering,” he said, “If you’d be able to paint something on it. Can you paint on wood?”

I had painted on wood before—years ago—but that was with acrylic paints. So this was going to be a new experience for myself as well. The idea was that I would paint something on this slab of wood and then we would give it to a mutual friend whose wife had just had a miscarriage. It’d be something they would both enjoy, and they were enthusiastic supporters of my work. Having recently made the switch from acrylics to oil paint, I was happy for the opportunity to practice. So I accepted the challenge.

We took the board to my next door neighbor’s house, where an elderly widow lived. She was selling a bunch of woodworking equipment belonging to her late husband, and my friend was searching for a routing table. We found one, tested it out on the board, and walked out with a nice beveled edge on the board and a routing table for future projects.

And then I was left with some cherry wood on which I was supposed to apply my oil paints.

For subject matter, we eventually settled on the deep recesses of an apple tree, where the leaves are all over the edges and an apple shares space with some flowers. I had to do some research to see if new flowers and ripe apples could exist on the same tree. They could, apparently, though it was fairly rare.

I then went through my usual routine of selecting reference photos, sketching potential compositions, and playing with color schemes. I also applied some paint to a few scraps of cherry wood to test my theory that it would be a fairly benign process. After I liked what I had, I did a quick test run on a canvas panel before moving on to the real deal.

While it was a fairly straightforward process, there were a few differences with painting on wood as opposed to typical canvas. First was the smoothness—no texture whatsoever to grab paint. Because of this, it was easy for the paint to spread too thin, letting the dark cherry wood show through behind. I figured that since I typically base coat my panels with Burnt Sienna, this would be a similar process. But I found the wood to be darker than I needed, which required a second and third layer of paint to get the background I desired.

From my trial runs on the scrap wood, I knew that the wood had a tendency to suck the oil out of the paint and into the wood. But I didn’t notice any negative effects during the painting or drying process.

In the end, it worked very much like a normal canvas painting without the texture. Even with two or three layers of paint, there were still areas where the wood grain was evident—but you know what? That’s the cool part about painting on wood.

After the whole thing was dry and I was satisfied with the end result, I answered the ultimate question: would the painter’s tape I had used to protect the boarder tear away the paint? Had any paint soaked underneath the tape? If it had, I would have a very sketchy sanding job on my hands.

Fortunately, the tape came off beautifully. I had very carefully applied the tape to ensure it was symmetrical on all sides, and I was not disappointed with the result. When removing it, I made sure to pull the tape off at a 90 degree angle to how it was applied, being sure to not lift up from the surface but to pull it out and away sideways. Even with dry oil paint, the tape came cleanly away with no evident tearing of the paint layer. Underneath the tape was clean wood—no oil stains at all.

Something I should have done before putting paint to wood was attaching some hanging implements to the back of the board. We were very careful to not crack the wood, and we were successful at this venture, but it was certainly stressful when it came time to nail a hangar on the back.

About half a year later, I went over the entire front of the board with a straight up Windsor and Newton varnish mixture of 1/3 matte and 2/3 gloss. I applied this to the paint as well as to the board itself—it behaved much like any other varnish one would apply to wood, and it brought out the colors of the wood around the edge of the painting quite well.

All in all, it was a simple project, but painting on wood should be done with a few extra considerations:

• Make sure to have a dry, durable, and sturdy chunk of wood on which to apply the paint. The wood should be high quality and not threatening to split any time inside of this century.

• The wood should have a clean, uniform surface. While sanding helps achieve this, it is not something to invest a huge amount of time over. Depending on the amount and thickness of paint used, only enough sanding to make the edges look nice would be necessary—and maybe a rougher surface would be better for a rustic look.

• Attach whatever hanging utensils are needed to the back of the wood piece before beginning the painting process.

• Do not varnish the surface of the wood before applying paint. It could prevent the oil from adhering to the board.

• Painter’s tape is an effective tool to prevent paint from going in undesirable places. But if very thick applications of paint are made and left to dry on the transition area between tape and board, this may not be a good choice.

• Though not technically designed for it, Windsor and Newton’s varnish worked quite well for myself on both the paint and the wooden board.

That’s it. It was not a stressful process, and the result was pretty cool looking. Painting on wood can provide a lot of opportunities to dig into the rustic, rough-hewn look which if combined with the right style of painting technique could produce a very satisfactory product.