Canvas Art

How to prime a canvas?

To get a consistent finish on your support, use a broad priming brush like a C Roberson. Begin on one side of the support and work horizontally in one direction across the whole surface, then let it dry. After the first coat has dried, rotate the support 90 degrees and continue the cycle, working across the brushstrokes of the first layer. Allow to dry again, and then repeat as needed. You can see our medical canvas art.

How to prepare your canvas for painting

First and foremost, eliminate the white! Add a colour ground to your canvas, or to put it another way, apply a colour ground to your canvas. This not only eliminates the intimidating white, but it also serves as a harmonizer. Some of the ground will unavoidably show through the brush strokes as you paint, producing a beautiful, harmonized impression. If you’re going to use oil paints, apply the ground colour thinly mixed with a little Liquin drying media (available on Amazon) the day before you want to start painting so it has time to cure.

Apply the ground colour using a brush and a wad of kitchen towel, then scrape it in. Don’t be overly concerned with perfection; it doesn’t have to be. Experiment with different coloured grounds to see what you can come up with.

Using a mahlstick

To get started with canvas painting, you don’t need much equipment, but what you do need is worth investing in. A mahlstick is an excellent instrument for painting on canvas. It’s just a pole with a cork ball on the end coated in chamois leather, and it’s meant to offer artists something to lean on when working on larger canvases. They are, nevertheless, particularly useful with a smaller canvas.

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