I paint on Claessen’s #20 oil primed linen - unless I’m painting on aluminum, birch, watercolour paper, Yupo…
So, sometimes I paint on Claessen’s #20 linen:)
I used to stretch my primed linen before painting because I loved the drum-like bounce under my brush. Now, however, I stretch after a painting is done because I’ve become much more heavy handed over the years. I’ve discovered the expressive possibilities of scraping, scrubbing, and shoving paint around and that rough treatment needs a rigid surface.
I don’t fancy wood for larger pieces, so I still use linen, but I tape it to a piece of plywood while working. When I think the painting is nearly done, I stretch it and put on finishing touches. I find those final marks can only happen once I see the piece without its 2” border of white linen. Ideally, I’d also pop it into a frame which is the best way to discover what needs to be adjusted.
Stretching heavy linen is no small thing. It has no flex and is like stretching cardboard. Then, after it’s been on the stretcher for a few weeks, it starts to relax and show floppiness and bowing. At that point, I have to remove all of the staples and restretch it in the hopes that it will stay tight when it goes to a gallery or a new home.
The time-honoured stretching method is to put staples in the middle of each of the 4 sides and work toward the corners, putting a staple in on one side, then rotating the canvas, pulling it tight with canvas pliers, and placing a staple opposite the first one. I’ve been using this method for years.
Recently, though, I found this article on Justpaint.org which showed me a new way to stretch so I’m giving it a go.
Instead of working from the middle to the corners, you work from the corners to the middle. And rather than using staples, you start with aluminum push pins - a welcome innovation for me since prying out staples is not fun.
I’ve stretched this piece and will let it relax for a couple of weeks before I replace the pins with staples and finish the corners. I’ll also put wooden tensioning keys in the corners to get it tighter still.
Unlike the article’s side tacking, I chose to put the pins on the rear of the stretcher bars because I didn’t want holes near the painted image.
So far I’m impressed. There’s good tension across the whole canvas and it was certainly easy to tap those aluminum pins in place. They’re sharp!
The trick will be in replacing the pins with staples. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Happy painting!
Thanks for that lesson Ingrid. I mighta tualltry painting on unstretched canvas now.😃
seriously cool art 3^