Wooden Paintings

Wooden painting is done on a piece of wood or on a number of pieces of wood. Wood painting is an old form of art. Wood painters who like to experiment with various wood surfaces use a plain wood surface as that can make for a good canvas.

The most popular form of wooden painting is panel painting which can be traced to Rome and Greece during the Byzantine era. In the 12th century, it resurfaced and became popular in Western Europe. Wood panel paintings came to be used in churches and depicted mostly Christ, Virgin Mary and other saints.

The common variations and techniques in wood panel painting is as follows:

• A carpenter would make a solid wood piece of the size of a panel. A radial cut piece was preferable across the length of the tree with the outer sapwood excluded. It would be then planed and sanded, if required and joined with other pieces to get the desired shape and size.
• The wood piece would be coated with a mixture of animal skin glue and resin and then covered with linen. The mixture with linen was called 'size'.
• Once the size dried, layers of gesso would be applied and each layer would be sanded down before the next layer until a smooth and hard surface was formed quite like ivory.
• The design was then laid out usually in charcoal.

Usually the wood panel painting is encaustic which uses hot wax as the medium for the pigments. This method was later replaced by the method called tempera, which used egg yolk. A small brush was used using the pigment and egg yolk mixture, in small strokes. The strokes had to be so perfect that it could shape the nature and style of art.

Gradually, oil painting came to be used which was a multi-layered technique where the painting had to be dried for a couple of days before the next could be applied.

Indian wooden paintings also include several techniques such as sponging, graining, stenciling and so on. One can also invent newer techniques to render variations to this art form. There are wooden paintings that make use of three or more colors on pieces of wooden blocks. Dancing dame, meditating sage, folk dance, dhaki tribal dance, Ganesha, hanuman and other deities, Manipuri dance, etc are some of the popular wooden paintings.

Wooden paintings or wood panel painting is used in contemporary art and is an emerging art form in India. Wood painters have taken this art to other parts of the world by beautifying it with Indian sensibilities.