Oil Painting Guide for beginners: CANVASES

If you are a beginner then this could be a very good option. Canvas paper is  heavyweight paper which can be painted on with oils or acrylics - it won't warp or wrinkle from the wet paint even as it dries and contracts.

It's imprinted with a 'weave' pattern to look just like traditional canvas. You buy it in a tear-off pad, and it's much cheaper than buying a proper canvas so if you'd like to practice, get yourself a pad. If you are pleased with the results and want to display them, you can mount it up onto some card (use double-sided tape or spray glue) and then frame it normally.

Canvas boards usually cost a few pounds each, though this is still cheaper than buying a stretched canvas. Canvas boards are made from a cotton canvas, stretched over and stuck to a stiff cardboard frame several millimetres thick. If you are going to frame your painting then canvas board is a very good option because you can have as thin a frame as you like and it will still hide the edges of the canvas.

A stretched canvas is the traditional option. Usually between half an inch and two inches deep, the canvas fabric is pulled taut around a wooden frame called a 'stretcher' and stapled firmly down. Canvas fabric is usually cotton, also known as 'cotton duck' (from the Dutch doek which rather confusingly means 'linen canvas') Stretched canvasses are more expensive than canvas board, so why might you prefer to choose one?


Well firstly, you'll have a greater choice of texture with a stretched canvas. Canvas weaves usually vary from make to make from quite a coarse weave - which you may prefer if you want to paint in a fairly loose style - or a rather finer weave. Stretched canvasses can be made with a linen rather than cotton canvas and these are particularly soft and smooth to work on, they cost a little more but they feel lovely to work on! If you want to make a small painting or one with a lot of fine detail then this is a very good option.

Another reason to choose a stretched canvas might be that you prefer NOT to frame your painting. It's quite common for modern paintings to be simply finished on the sides as well as the front, and put straight on the wall like this one above (you see a larger version of this child portrait on my website) You can finish the sides in white or in your background colour. To hang it you just knock a couple of nails into the wall and hook the canvas over them. If you plan to put your painting straight on the wall then choose a nice chunky one - at least three-quarters of an inch to an inch I'd suggest, or larger if the painting is a particularly big one. If you want to finish a canvas this way, check before you buy that your stretched canvas is stapled on the back rather than at the sides - usually these days most are stapled on the back precisely for this reason, but there are exceptions.


THINGS TO WATCH OUT FOR WHEN BUYING A STRETCHED CANVAS


FIRSTLY, press your canvas lightly in the middle to check that it isn't already sagging. This can be a problem with some cheaper brands of canvas. The fabric should be stretched nice and tightly. Good brands for stretched canvasses are Daler-Rowney, Windsor & Newton and Loxley - and these should all be fine. 

SECONDLY, make sure that you are buying a pre-primed or ready-primed canvas. The majority of canvases sold by art shops are pre-primed - it will say so on the packaging and they will be bright white in colour like the ones above. However you may also see some soft brown canvases like those to the right - these are natural linen, un-primed canvases. They look very attractive, but remember that if you buy an un-primed canvas then you MUST prime it yourself.

In order to conserve the oil paint that's going to be applied to the canvas, it first has to be primed with a layer of 'size'. This is a glue, traditionally made from rabbit skin and today often made from a type of PVA. A thin layer of size over the natural canvas will stop the acid in the oils which the paints come mixed with from eventually rotting the fibres - the glue seals them in and protects them. On top of the layer of size, several layers of priming need to be applied, using a paint with the right amount of linseed oil to provide the necessary flexibility. These layers will then be sanded down until smooth to remove any ridges. 

Occasionally I've been careless and leaned my hand on my canvas, leaving a finger-shaped dent in it - it's easy to damage a canvas if you've been storing it for a while too. If this happens though there's an easy way to get any dents out. Turn your canvas over, lay it on an ironing board on a clean sheet of paper, and with a cool iron (on 'steam' is best) quickly iron over it. It should vanish completely. I've even done this when the canvas already has (dried) paint on it - I don't think it does the paint any damage if you just use the iron very briefly.

If you've bought a pre-primed canvas,  you'll probably have noticed the little bag with small wedges of wood which is stapled to the back, and possibly wondered what they are! These are known as 'canvas keys' and most canvases are sold with them - their purpose is to further tighten the canvas if it's a little loose. You put them into the slots in the corners of the canvas and tap them with a hammer to lodge them in and tighten the canvas stretcher further. I generally find that canvasses come taught enough and these keys aren't necessary - you risk stretching your canvases' right-angled corners if you don't tap them easily in all corners. Always do any tightening before you start painting.

Anna Bregman is a portrait artist who specialises in child portraits. Resident in London, she studied design at Central Saint Martin's College followed by an Art History at University College London, which included the structure and conservation of oil paintings. She loves all kinds of art, design and art history and particularly loves working in oil paint. She also creates pencil portraits in graphite.
Visit her website to find out how to commission a portrait from photographs.

For her other Squidoo Oil Painting Guides including her guide to oil paints, see her recommendations panel, above right.

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