Playing with Grounds

I've been experimenting with grounds, size, and gesso. I had been given a huge pile of mat board cutouts and wanted to try to use these for my oil or pastel paintings, since I am not a fan of canvas. I recently tried the approach of using PVA size on the boards, followed by oil painting ground. Both of these products are by Gamblin. I use Gamblin oil paints exclusively and love the quality. I tried using the ground by itself on panels, but felt the paint 'lifted' as I was painting. So I figured I might need to size the panels first. It didn't seem to make much difference.

The painting below was a quickie painting done on one of these boards. This scene is at Bremerton from my trip in June. I used the Fast Matte oil paints last night. I really didn't like the feel of this surface at all and was going to give up on this one, but today with left over regular oil paints, I finished this up. I think the Fast Matte paint works well for an underpainting, with the regular oils on top. Although it isn't a spectacular painting, I feel I learned a lot from my experiment, both about the surface preparation and the paint. I think I prefer the feel of gesso.

Bremerton - High Tide,  8x10 oil on paper panel