Be Creative Corner


Painting Surfaces

Here we give you a short description of different surfaces to paint on when using acrylics.  First we can start with the original canvas cloth with spreader sticks.  You can also use canvas panels.   It's canvases glued on a hard panel backing, like hardboard or cardboard.

Some people paint sometimes on cardboard.  I used also hard board that you can get at the depot stations and you use gesso to treat them.  Other items that you can use is acrylic paper that's almost like a canvas paper and you can even use, believe it or not, watercolor paper.

Today, we are going to tell you how to prepare your canvas before you start painting.  You can start for example and paint on a regular canvas.  It makes it a little rough, but sometimes people like to paint that way.

If you want to do detail you would like to do it on something that is a little smoother even if you are doing a portrait and how you do that is with products called Gesso.  It comes in a plastic tube tub or it comes in a metal container, it depends on how much you are going to use.

We take some Gesso with our fingers and we rub it into the cloth and we do this all the way over through the canvas until we fill it up so that it is smooth and the fibers ar smoothed down.

After that we let it dry, then we apply more Gesso over it the same way and  two or three coats will make it smooth enough so that you won’t get the roughness. Then we take the canvas or the panel or the board that you have done and you and by taking rough sandpaper you sand lightly along your canvas until it becomes smooth.

Once you do that you might have problems with canvases being loose.   You can change that by taking a spray bottle and you spray water lightly on the back of the canvas, rub it in a little bit and let it dry and the cotton in the canvas will shrink and it will tighten up your canvas again.