Painting Surfaces

Painting surfaces can be as traditional as canvas or wood, or as creative as the painting itself when using paper, glass, or even my favorite painting surface - stretched chiffon. If you tend to use more unconventional materials you may have already considered its special preparation, based upon your particular painting needs. However, if you will be painting on traditional canvas or wood, your surface will need to be properly prepared not only for preservation reasons, but also because your surface will set the underlying professional appearance of your painting. An improperly stretched or sloppy canvas can ruin the presence of an entire painting, regardless of how well it is painted. In order to avoid this mishap, this article will focus on preparing a stretched canvas or wood painting surface the correct way.

Canvas
Although wood seems to have been the preferred painting surface of the old masters hundreds of years ago, these days the most common and scholastic painting surface is stretched canvas. More unconventional and being seen more frequently by contemporary artists, are paintings done on unstretched canvas. There is also a recent trend to paint on an unfinished surface, either stretched or unstretched, in order to give a raw quality to the painting. In any event, it is beneficial to learn how to properly stretch and prime a canvas if only to tackle one of the basic fundamentals of oil painting.

Canvas is available in different blends and thickness, and can also be substituted with artist grade linen. Cotton duck is considered the best blend of canvas to use for oil painting, which comes in varying grades of quality or thickness. It is important that the material you choose is strong enough to tolerate the great tension it will be subjected to when stretched. A good standard medium grade cotton duck is #10 or medium weight, which is fairly heavy, durable and suitable for all types painting. Canvas and linen are available by the yard or roll. Rolls are fairly large, and as such quite expensive, so I advise buying by the roll only if you have a very flexible budget or plan to produce large paintings. I find that for small to medium sized pieces, it is helpful to pick up about 4 yards at a time so you’ll always have plenty on hand. Be wary of already primed unstretched canvas, as it will be very difficult to stretch. It is ideal that you stretch and prime your own canvas in order to ensure its long-lasting quality and good craftsmanship.

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