Testing the Illustration Board

The illustration board I bought is a little different than I usually get.  I was careful at the store to go through their entire stock of illustration boards and look at their thickness and feel the texture of the board.  I also wanted to be conscious of my cost as it can be very pricey buying that much board for the whole project.  I thank the Lord that on that particular day that I went to get the board, it was 50% off as well!  YES!

But this board was a little thinner than I have used in the past and I wondered if it could stand the amount of paint that I would put on it over most of it's surface area.
I decided to cut a similar shape of a spread and make a test painting and see for myself if it was going to buckle or warp any.

I held my breath!

I didn't want a great painting so I didn't make a tracing...I just starting brushing down a liberal amount of paint over a lot of it's surface and waited to see what would happen.  I had the illustration board taped (on all 4 corners) to my drawing table to give it it's best chance at staying flat.
It did stay flat after the paint dried!

So, put some more paint on top of that....alot of paint...and waited again.
Wow, that board stayed flat as a pancake!  I was THRILLED!  This was going to work well!

Finally I decided to paint a little something with some detail on top of the background paint I had already put down to make sure it would still hold up well.  That is how I paint...background first, then come forward to the middle ground and finally the foreground where all the detail and darker values tend to be.
Wooooohooo!  Yes!  It passed the test!

I used Liquitex acrylic paints with a white bristle brush mainly.
I'm now ready to take my completed tracing (pages 6 and 7) and begin my first painting!
It's November and I'm already jumping into my first painting...the last painting is due in July.  This means I have 8 months to do 18 paintings.  I feel really good about where I am in the process...I can do this and hopefully even complete everything before my July deadline.