Beginners Guide For Canvas Painting

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painting on canvas

This guide to canvas painting for beginners will give you everything you need to know. From the kit, you’ll need to prepare your surface for painting and different techniques to try. If you’ve mainly worked in your sketchbook or on paper so far, this guide will help make a move to canvas a lot less daunting.

It offers a wealth of advantages over paper, and it’s much more durable than paper. It ensures that your work lasts till years, so it’s worth taking the time to get the grips with his approach.

If you need more advice on painting, see our posts on art techniques, and if you need to stock up on supplies, see our pick of the best canvases for oils, the best oil paints, and the best paint brushes for oils. Meanwhile, read on for our complete guide to canvas painting for beginners. You can use the quick links on the right to skip to specific sections.

Which Canvas To Buy?

Walk into any art shop today, and the most common canvases available are made from cotton pre-primed with acrylic gesso, linen canvas primed with oil primer at the more expensive end of the ‘premade market. If you feel like splashing out, larger art shops will often offer a bespoke canvas-making service. That will give you a quality pre-made canvas that will stand the test of time but expects to pay a considerable price for it.

However, if you’re just getting started with canvas painting, it might make sense to pick up a cheaper cotton canvas to experiment on first. You can continually improve a cheap pre-made cotton canvas by re-priming it with an oil primer.

Wooden Corners For Canvas

A close up of a wooden floor

The wedges are designed to be hammered into the holes on the internal corners of your canvases to create a bit of tension on the canvas surface. This is vital to ensure a plain surface to control your brushstrokes and make your design easy. You might want to invest in a suitable rubber mallet for knocking in your wedges without damaging the stretcher bars, as the mallets enhance the quality of your canvas.

Adjust Colours Adequately

While oil paints will dry about the same color as they look when applied, acrylic paint will dry slightly darker than it looks while you’re painting. Adjust your color mixes accordingly so that the finished piece isn’t darker than you want it to be. You can test the result before you take paint to canvas by painting a little bit of a color on a piece of scrap paper and seeing how dark the swatch dries.

Have A Safe Space For Your Canvas To Dry.

Even small places can spoil the canvas when wet. Make sure to keep a safe spot for the canvas to let it dry as if it gets spoiled, all your hard work would get spoiled, and you would be left with only one choice that is winding up and sleeping.

Avoid animals or pets coming near the canvas.

Final Say

Background pattern

There was all you needed to know about the canvas. Make sure to take all the necessary precautions and be aware of mixing only the necessary colors.

I hope this one helps you make the best canvas.

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