The Canvas Wars

Every painter I know has serious terminal angst over what canvas to use- lead primed, double-primed, cotton, polyester, panels, strainers or stretchers. Whew!

I will only try to address the problems inherent in large life-sized formats- yunno- the biggies.

There seams to be a consensus among conservators that lead priming is superior- however the standard easily available pre-primed canvasses like Claessens 13 DP and Rix 111 are now using oil based primers- not lead anymore. This lead me to my latest unfortunate adventure in canvas stretching- PRIMING MY OWN!

Whoo- I read all the stuff I could get my hand on-in books and on the internet. Got all the right stuff- Rublev lead primer from Natural Pigments- PVA size ( I chickened out on the rabbit skin glue).

and Claessen's unprimed #13 linen.

What a horror show-! Do you have any idea how long and hard it is to properly prepare an 8' canvas. I sized-then primed, then sanded and sanded. It was 8' of total warty crap! I was doing a nude so I did not need something that would make my model look like she has a skin disease. No wonder J.S. Sargent used pre-primed.

More tomorrow.

Well January 31st is not exactly tomorrow.....

Since I was up a tree without a canvas and hired a model- I had to get something. I remembered

a well-respected figurative artist ad recommended some double lead primed linen from the New York Central Art Store. It was fine woven lead primed portrait linen. I have a great deal of respect for that art store and use it frequently- but the linen was a total disappointment. It was sloppily prepared and I had to sand it to get rid of the many imperfections. Even after that when I started to paint the model the were obvious and disfiguring slubs and bumps all over the figure part- even though I had gone to great lengths to avoid this. The worst was a large horizontal slub through the chin.

I ccould not go on so I had to find another quality option ASAP. When I hire a model I cannot in good concious lay her off as she depends on the income. The Italian Art Store- the best and most reliable art store on the planet- dispatched some linen samples- specifically ArtFix. No good- they were either too slick- the quadruple primed portrait linen- the other were too rough. I had bought a roll of this stuff before and gave it away ($900 dollars worth)- it was like painting on a shower curtain. In desperation I saw Blick was having a sale on the RIX 111- not lead primed but oil primed and only about $420 for oil double primed linen (56'x6yds) including shipping. For me the surface was perfection- just enough tooth, and beautifully prepared right here in the USA.

There was an AAAARRGH moment- a few days later I walked into a local Utrecht store in Providence. In the back was a stack of Claessens DP 13- a linen I had used for years. I had called this store and some poorly informed clerk told me that they only had acrylic primed linen in rolls. Ahem.

In the future I will be investigating polyester linen- as I think that is the future.