January 2026: Watercolour on Wood

Watching: all David Cronenberg’s films in chronological order
Reading: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Listening to: Wishful Thinking (NJ)
Working on: building a screen printing setup in my kitchen, thumbnails for comics

A few years ago wanted to paint on some skateboard decks as I occasionally did in my teenage years, but I didn’t want to use oils or acrylics. Enter clear watercolour ground. You apply it to a surface, the surface becomes appropriate for ink/watercolour/gouache/coloured pencil/etc. Ideal, and not very expensive! I ended up liking it a lot and have done quite a few paintings on wood.

This does not behave like paper, so do a small test piece first to get used to it.

Materials:
• A jar of transparent watercolour ground
• A 1” or larger cheap brush
• A pencil – I use a blue col-erase and a regular 2B mechanical pencil
• The materials you’re going to use for the picture – gouache, inkwash, watercolour, coloured pencil, etc
• An unprimed wood surface – art and craft stores sell ready-to-use bare wood panels
• Sealing spray to finish it (that’s what I use, anything archival quality is fine)

Get your wood panel and make the drawing. Pencil erases badly on the prepared surface, so draw on the bare wood. You can draw directly onto the surface or transfer a sketch in a variety of ways – whatever works for you. Don’t press too hard, you’ll gouge the wood and it won’t erase well (if at all). Don’t use anything smudgy (charcoal, pastel) to draw on the wood, as applying the ground will likely obliterate it.

When you’re happy with the drawing, use the large cheap brush to paint over it with the transparent watercolour ground. Once this goes on, that’s it, the drawing is sealed, so make sure you like it. Cover the panel with one layer, let that dry to the touch, then add a second, and maybe a third. Don’t slop the medium on really thick, but don’t be stingy either. It looks a bit milky while it’s wet, but it dries clear.

Allow the panel to cure for a minimum of twenty four hours, preferably forty eight, and more if it’s humid. Better more than not enough. Dry is not the same as cured! I always give myself three to five days minimum between preparing the surface and painting because I’m cautious, and it’s easier to wait an extra day or two than start over. Sometimes I prepare multiple surfaces at once and they sit for months.

Now you can paint!

Expect your first try to be more about learning how watercolour behaves on wood, because it is not the same as paper.

Layering works differently on this surface, and the paints reactivate easier than on paper. Tinting with a wash over dry paint usually shifts a lot of the colours you’ve already put down. You can get it to do some interesting bleeds and lifts, but it’s unpredictable.

Unlike paper, the wood surface doesn’t get soggy. For wood paintings, I usually don’t use a water barrel brush because I want to control the amount of water – it won’t absorb and can puddle quickly. I did for some of these. Have a rag handy.

Detail is a bit more challenging on wood than on paper, I have been liking coloured mechanical pencils for finer details and lines.

Give the piece time to dry completely, then spray it with the sealant. I like the gloss finish, but it doesn’t matter as long as it’s archival quality. Sometimes I do an extra layer of brush-on gloss.

I don’t think I’d use brush-applied varnish as a first layer because of how easily watercolour reactivates on this surface. If you do use it for later layers, DO NOT POUR A PUDDLE OF GLOSS ON IT THEN SPREAD IT AROUND. Do not do this, it will often ruin your work, the viral videos you watched with people doing it are wrong. You watched an ASMR video of someone wrecking a painting. Apply from the jar/a bowl and use multiple thin layers that you let dry between!

I really like how these look, I think the wood grain adds a warmth.

Notes

1. When I looked up reviews before first trying this, every art blog I saw made the exact same mistake of not letting it cure and ruining the surface, which was a bit sad because the instructions are right there on the jar. Do it right or do it over.
2. You can put pigment in the ground to tint it, which works okay but not as well as I hoped. It might be the mediocre pigment I tried though. I’ll experiment more if I buy some better pigment.
3. You don’t have to use wood, I just like how it looks. By all means try it on other surfaces! Build up layers! Go wild. I tried doing it over an acrylic underpainting on canvas and a few similar things. I like the bare wood grain as a ground tone.
4. If you truly fuck up, you can run it under the tap to rinse most of the watercolour pigment off. Maybe do another layer of the ground over the top if this happens.
5. I wasn’t kidding about not pouring a puddle of varnish onto the panel. Don’t do that.