Oil painting on canvas simplified

Beginner Oil: How to prepare a canvas for an oil painting

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The method for preparing a canvas varies from artist to artist. This is primarily because there are several options to choose from in every phase of preparation. Here, we outline the choices available so that you can confidently begin to know how to paint.

by Naomi Ekperigin

The method for preparing a canvas varies from artist to artist. This is primarily because there are several options to choose from in every phase of preparation. Here, we outline the choices available so that you can confidently begin to work in oil.

An example of unprimed cotton.
Photo courtesy Fredrix Artist Canvas.

An example of unprimed linen.
Photo courtesy Fredrix Artist Canvas.

The most common support used by painters, canvas, does not refer to one particular material, but can be used to describe many kinds of closely woven fabric. The two most common canvases used as a support for oil painting are cotton and linen, with linen being the more expensive. When both are unprimed-that is, not coated with a material that prevents the paint from soaking through the surface and deteriorating the canvas-they can be easily distinguished. Both kinds of canvas can be purchased primed or unprimed; either way is acceptable. Both cotton and linen are a light tan color when they are unprimed. Primed canvas allows you to skip the process of mixing and applying the sizing and ground, which many beginning artists and hobbyists prefer. However, unprimed canvas is less expensive, and frequent painters find it beneficial to learn how to apply their own priming,
as it cuts costs and enables them to create a texture specific to their painting needs.

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HOW TO STRETCH CANVAS

Before the canvas is primed, it must be stretched to fit the frame. Attempting to stretch it after it has been primed will result in cracking and flaking of the priming, which creates a rough surface on which to apply oil paint. Primer also makes the canvas rigid and it is unlikely to yield no matter how hard you tug at it. Stretching your own canvas can be difficult at first, but it is more cost-effective than purchasing pre-stretched canvases, which is a consideration for many artists. The following tools are required to stretch a canvas:

• Four stretcher bars (pieces of wood that make up the frame. These can be purchased at any art-supply or hardware store). The most common bars are tongue-and-groove with mitered corners and beveled sides.
• Staple gun and staples (or a hammer and carpet tacks, depending on preference). Coated or iodized metal staples made of copper or brass are best.
• Canvas pliers (to help you maintain a tight grip on the canvas as you attach it to the stretcher bars)
• Scissors, knife, or other sharp blade.
• Right angle (to ensure evenness)

1. First, join your stretcher bars at the corners, forming a rectangle. You may have to push them by hand to tighten them, or lightly tap them with a hammer (be careful not to dent the wood when you do this).
2. Use the right angle to make sure that all corners are 90 degree angles.
3. Once the stretchers are securely connected and straight, roll your canvas out on a clean surface.
4. Place the frame on top, and use your scissors to cut the canvas to size, making sure to leave at least two to three inches of extra material on all sides so that you can staple the canvas to the frame.

SIZING, GROUND, and PRIMING

Now that the canvas is attached to the frame, it is ready for sizing and ground. These terms can be very confusing, as their meanings overlap and are sometimes used interchangeably. Sizing is applied first, and acts as a sealant and protection for the canvas. For oil painting, a weak solution of animal glue is applied to linen canvases to protect them from the acid in the paints, which can cause the canvas to deteriorate. Ground is applied on top of sizing, providing a uniform color, texture, and level of absorbency, in addition to acting as an additional layer of protection for the canvas. In the case of oil painting, the most common ground is gesso– a combination of oil with an inert white pigment such as chalk, whiting, or plaster of Paris, and an aqueous binder such as casein or animal glue.

Gesso can be made and purchased in varying levels of consistency-from cream to a paste-depending on the desired texture and level of absorbency. It also comes in different colors, though white is the most common. Water-based gesso was created in the mid-1950s and it is primarily used for painting with acrylics. Making your own gesso requires heating animal glue, such as a calf or rabbitskin, and mixing it with white pigment. The glue must be heated until it is smooth, but not to the boiling point. Perfecting this method requires practice, and with the various types of prepared gesso available for purchase, beginning artists can avoid this step.

Applying gesso in thin coats ensures an even painting surface.
Photo courtesy Utrecht Art Supplies.

Normally, gesso is applied in two or three thin coats, to create a smooth finish. If a rougher texture is preferred, only one coat may be necessary. “The amount of gesso applied determines the texture of your painting surface,” explains artist Joe Gyurcsak. “If a painter is going to be working in detail, a smoother surface may be better.”

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After stirring your gesso, add a small amount of water (no more than 1 part water to 2 parts gesso) to thin it. It is tempting to mix a lot of water into the gesso to increase its quantity and save money, but doing so creates an unstable ground. “Overthinning is dangerous,” warns Gyurscak. “The polymer can only be broken down so much, and adding water compromises the integrity of the gesso film.” Gesso dries rapidly, so it must be quickly applied in smooth, even strokes in one direction. After the first coat, allow the gesso to dry (approximately one hour) and lightly brush with fine sandpaper to smooth. After smoothing, wipe the surface with a soft, dry cloth to remove dust and residue.You should also thoroughly rinse your brush between applications, because gesso cannot be removed once it dries. The next coat should be applied in even strokes in the opposite direction of the previous coat so that no brush marks are visible. Don’t forget to coat the sides and corners of your canvas-many paintings have disintegrated along the edges due to lack of priming.

Ready to Paint?

Once you’ve primed your canvas, you are ready to answer this question: palette knife or brush? Which will you choose and why? Enjoy this video demonstration to explore everything that comes next at the easel.

Naomi Ekperigin is the editorial assistant for American Artist.

How to Oil Paint on Canvas

This article was co-authored by Antoine de Villiers. Antoine de Villiers is an Artist and the Founder of Antoine Art Studio LLC based in Savannah, GA. Antoine has over 25 years of experience, specializing in oil painting, graphite & charcoal drawing. She has had over 70 exhibitions around the globe and her work has received numerous awards including Best Figurative Artist by The Richmond Art Museum, Indiana (USA), Best Solo Artist by Eric Smith at the New York Art Expo, and first place in Figurative Painting by Pamela Jean Tinnen from Artrepreneur. She earned her Web Design Diploma from Boston Business College and studied Indian Art, Visual Art, and Modern Art at the University of Oxford, Department of Continuing Education.

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Painting with oil is a fine way of painting the canvas. Classic paintings like the Mona Lisa were oil-painted, along with beautiful Impressionist paintings such as those by Monet or Van Gogh.

Steps

Part 1
Part 1 of 5:

Preparation

• A stretched canvas the size of the painting you would like to do. It’s a good thing to also purchase several small “canvas boards” for practice and preliminary studies. You can also use canvas paper or canvas that comes in pads, as long as they say they’re suited for oil painting and are gessoed. Try to choose a small board with the exact proportions of the stretched canvas but if it’s not, get one larger so that you can mark up that shape on it.
• Tubes of oil paint in a basic palette. If you’re purchasing a set, it probably has all the most essential colors. The smallest essential palette has red, blue, yellow, Burnt Sienna and a large tube of white. If it’s Winsor and Newton open stock, get Lemon Yellow, Permanent Rose and Ultramarine or French Ultramarine (they are chemically close.) If it’s choosing primaries out of a set with more colors, use Alizarin Crimson or whichever the more purple cast red is, not the orange red. You could do without the Burnt Sienna but there’s a reason for it besides mixing. If your set doesn’t have it, use the reddish brown.
• Buy the oil and thinner. Linseed oil is a traditional oil painter’s medium. Some artists like walnut oil better. If you want your painting to dry faster, choosing a medium like Winsor & Newton’s “Liquin” will make the oil painting dry faster. You will also need turpentine, or odorless turpentine substitute, sometimes called turpenoid, or white mineral spirits. This is a thin liquid that has a strong or slight odor, it’s a paint thinner as opposed to a medium. Odorless paint thinners, like Weber’s Turpenoid or Gamsol, are reputedly healthier to use, but always have proper ventilation when using volatiles. Oil paint itself is not toxic in the way that turpentine is in that it doesn’t give off toxic fumes. But some oil paints contain toxic ingredients like cadmium and cobalt that can be quite harmful if ingested. Never eat, drink or smoke while using oil paint.
• Buy some removable artist grade varnish such as Damar varnish intended for oil paintings. Varnish will probably have some toxic fumes and should be applied outdoors or in a well ventilated area. Definitely choose a removable artist grade varnish. Varnish is supposed to be added after the oil painting has completely dried all the way through and chemically changed to “cure.” At that point a clear removable varnish gets added to give it a nice glossy finish and protect the paint layer. Every 25 to 30 years, the varnish should be removed by a conservator (or the artist or owner) with a varnish remover solution and reapplied, because the varnishes become yellow over time and aren’t intended to be permanent. This is why very old oil paintings turn brown. They often just need cleaning and a clear new coat of varnish to look as bright as if they were painted last year. You don’t need to buy the varnish before finishing the painting, since you won’t use it till the painting’s done and completely dried. “Retouch varnish” can be used as soon as a painting is touch dry. It doesn’t hurt the paint layer, but the painting should feel thoroughly dry and you should wait a good month before using it. That gives a temporary finish if you want to sell the painting sooner.
• Buy the brushes. Stiff ones are preferred. Bristle brushes are less expensive at the cheap end but good ones of either white synthetic fiber that’s as stiff as bristle brushes are just as good. Some oil painters also use a soft sable brush with a long handle for different effects. Get a range of sizes, large medium and small, for blocking in areas, painting in the forms and objects and quite small ones for final details if you like detailed realism. A soft “rigger” brush with very long thin soft hairs gets used for ship’s rigging, cat’s whiskers and other long linear details in realism, it holds a lot of very thin paint and can be used to write your name small or do long smooth lines. For a beginner, it’s recommended that you try a variety pack of bristle or synthetic bristle brushes with different shapes and sizes to discover the style each one creates.
• Palette knife, painting knife or non serrated butter knife to serve as one for mixing paint. Palette knives are pretty cheap though if you get the plastic ones. The nicer metal ones don’t stain and will last for years if kept clean. Painting knives have different shapes like trowels and angled things, each has a different effect and you can use those instead of brushes to do your whole painting.
• Charcoal or a violet pastel pencil to sketch on the canvas.
• A palette to put your oil paints on while using them. This can be an actual palette with a thumb hole or you can improvise with a cheap plain ceramic, glass or melamine plate. Something that could stand up to being washed off with turpentine is good. Many artists prefer a gray palette because the colors show up truest on gray. If you use a flat piece of glass on a table (very cheap if you take it out of a cheap photo frame) you can put gray paper under it to have a gray easily cleaned palette for every time you need it.
• Two small cups for oil (or Liquin) and thinner. Some sets come with a “double dipper” that clips onto a palette, if so then your set probably also has a palette.
• Painting rags. These can be any kind of clean rags. Strong paper towels will work but cloth rags are reusable if washed. Cloth baby diapers that have been used and washed, even worn out stained ones, make really good painting rags. Paper towels wear out fast––it’s better to use old clothes that are soft like old t-shirts and stuff like that, actual rags. Try not to use fuzzy ones that shed though, since you may be wiping out painted areas with the rags. Use rags that are about at the end of their usefulness, unless you want to wash them out and keep reusing stained ones over and over.
• An easel to work at, either a table easel set up on a table or a standing easel. This doesn’t need to be expensive. The cheapest “display easel” will hold up any reasonably sized canvas at a comfortable working angle and its legs will adjust to a standing or sitting height. Unless you’re disabled by age, disease or injury limiting the amount of time you can stay on your feet, it’s much healthier to stand at the easel. This will also let you stand back every few strokes to see how the painting looks before adding to it, which makes for a better painting. You can also prop up the painting against a chair or other support, or otherwise improvise something. A “painting horse” is a bench with a board sticking up at the end that you straddle and prop the canvas into a groove.
• Sketching supplies to plan the painting – pencil or charcoal, sketchbook or drawing paper or even scrap paper. They don’t need to be archival since these are working sketches but if you like your sketches, you might as well get an actual sketchbook and use a soft pencil or even a pen or marker for it. Just something to sketch with and something to sketch on, your favorites. Your usual sketchbook and favorite drawing tools.
• A safe, dust free place to put the wet painting to dry where nothing is going to bang into the wet side to smear it. Drying times for oil paintings vary from a few days to several months. Some types of oil painting take up to a year to “cure” before they can be varnished. That said, you can let it dry for a day or two before painting new layers.