Welcome to our painting tutorial on getting a wood look on a regular canvas!

Have you ever wanted to paint on a wood pallet – but didn’t have one handy?

If you don’t have a wood pallet, you can create the same wood look. It’s easy to do and can add some nice dimension and style to your painting.

In order to get the wood effect, we use a black canvas to begin with and then you need to use various browns and allow each color to show.  We use a half inch flat brush but you can also use an angle brush. It is important to not blend the colors so that it is not color-blocked, meaning not all one shade.

How we achieve this is by loading your paint brush with both VanDyke Brown as well as Raw Sienna and then dip the tip in white.  You begin the delicate dance of painting the wood without blending it to a solid color. It is so important to have variations of light and dark colors to create the depth and dimensions on your canvas.  As you continue to load your brush and paint on the canvas, it is essential to “lift off” so you don’t see stop marks from your brush.

You also have to remember to leave a narrow strip of black between “planks”.  However, you can always add more of the black back in by using your script liner brush and watered down black paint. Using a dry brush technique, which means very little paint or wiping most of the paint off of your brush, you can also add some of the darkness back into the wood effect.   Creating a wood look is so easy and can make your painting pop!!!!