I’ve enjoyed painting on tile lately, and I’ve made probably about 20 tile paintings so far. Here is what I have learned about making paintings on tile.
A tile might be thought of as a nontraditional surface, yet it works so very well! It helps me to remember that a canvas is simply the best surface that people in the past could come up with at the particular time. Thousands of years of artists painting on rock, wood, canvas, and paper coalesces in canvases being what we largely think of as the best or most common art surface to paint on.
It turns out that painting in oil on tile is easy! I personally didn’t have to prime the surface at all for the kind of painting I do, which is usually impasto-style painting of laying down a thick layer of a neutral color like white or offwhite, and then painting into that layer with deeper color.
Since oil paint is very much made to stick, it doesn’t peel or chip off the tile. If you’ve ever painted on glass, it’s a lot like painting on glass. The paint doesn’t really fall or sink into any canvas, it sits on top of the glass surface and is easy to move around. This is why I think it’s great for impasto painting. It’s sculptural at some levels but still very much about painting and color.
Here are two lupine paintings I made with oil paint:
Oil on tile is awesome.
To paint in gouache on tile, I primed the tile with a thin coat of clear gesso. I am sure white gesso would also work well, I only happened to have clear gesso on hand so that is what I used.
I decided to do priming for gouache painting after attempting to paint without any priming, and this was immediately not a good idea. Maybe if the tile were less smooth or if it were more porous, one wouldn’t have to prime the tile, but I definitely had to prime every single type of tile I’ve had for gouache painting, and I’ve probably used about 4 different types.
These are oil paintings on tile samples
In the spring I had an idea to make paintings of desert night scenes with fantastic galaxies and nebulas, and having a tiny cowboy in the painting somewhere. I call this series the Space Cowboy series, overtly about the ending tag of each Cowboy Bebop episode.
I really enjoyed making these oil paintings on tile. The space cowboy paintings didn’t utilize too much impasto even, I think most of the paintings were pure oil with maybe a bit of liquin mixed in.
The paintings above are oil on tile, the paintings below are gouache on tile.
I eventually sealed the gouache with a thin layer of acrylic gel medium, to give the paintings the shine and apparent body of my oil paintings. I don’t think it’s hard to tell between the gouache and oil paintings, but if I weren’t so versed, it might be a bit hard to tell, because the finish is so similar.
If I layered the gouache too thickly, it would sometimes crack. I assume this is because the gouache can’t really sink into anything, so it forms a layer and loses structure, where gouache is designed to sink into paper and not be thickly layered. Given the cracks, I wasn’t sure how to fix this. I would try to thin out the cracked layer with water application or with another thin layer of paint (probably a bad idea) but it was hard to get those cracks out. Maybe even some particular colors of the gouache I was using cracked more than others. I’m not sure. After seeing the cracking, this is why I figured it would be a good idea to seal the gouache tile paintings in gel medium, which as far as I have seen is pretty much immune to all kinds of cracking and damage.
Another reason that I think we love painting on canvas is that a finished canvas is relatively easy to display. Nobody really frames a tile - tiles are meant to be stepped on, or meant to be put on a wall in large groups.
I found that shadow boxes worked really well to frame and display paintings on tile. I adhere the painting with a removable-but-strong tape strip to the shadow box backing, and let it sit in the box. I really like how this turned out. The glass protects the painting surface from dust and showcases the tile in an elegant way.
To sum up:
Painting in oil on tile is straightforward and doesn't require priming. The paint sticks well to the tile surface, allowing for impasto-style painting.
Gouache painting on tile requires priming with clear gesso to improve adhesion. Different types of tiles may need priming as well.
Shadow boxes are my recommendation for displaying painted tiles, providing protection and an elegant presentation.