I picked up a gesso board from my local art store so that I could see how well I liked using this surface for my paintings. Surprisingly it was an amazing product! This gesso board is a 3/4 inch thick cradled wood panel with a gesso treated surface. It is ideal for both oil and acrylic paints. The gesso has a little bit of a bumpy texture however, you are able to make it very smooth if you choose to do so by using a very fine sandpaper on it to take down the texture. I chose to sand my board so that it was similar to painting on wood, which I really like. The best thing about a gesso surface is that, unlike wood, this surface is sealed so that the paint will not bleed like it does on an untreated wood surface. I also like the smoothness unlike the canvas texture you get when using a traditional stretched canvas. For finer details, I tend to enjoy using a much smoother surface, even though I have been using canvases for many years in my art.

Check out the quick demo below where I use the gesso board for the very first time and make a quick robot painting.