Step-by-step guide to building a new painting support (part 2)

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Ok! have staples, will travel etc.

Step 6: loosely tack the four corners of the canvas onto the corners of the stretcher using your stapler. This is just to stop the canvas from flopping everywhere when you are turning it round stretching and stapling it.

Tip: if you rock the stapler to one side so you are not stapling perpendicular to the plane of the stretcher, you will have less hassle getting the corner tacks out again later.

Quick word about staplers: an expensive stainless steel gun stapler like the one shown is just that -- expensive (i.e. closer to NZ$100 than NZ$20) -- but it will last you a lifetime with very little or no maintenance. A good investment.

Pro-tip: don't forget to flip the stretcher over before you begin so you are not stapling on to the bevelled side! And see how I have labelled each edge with a point of the compass? That'll come into play shortly.

Step-by-step guide to building a new painting support (part 1)

or "How to stretch a canvas"..  [ next part | tutorials home ]

Step 1: Four stretcher bars feat. beveled top* and proper precision machine-mitred joints (bought off TradeMe). Look for warp-resistant timber, untreated (un-Tanalised), degreased, and kiln dried.

A quick note about size: I wouldn't go too large on the dimension front. This method does not involve cross-beam supports, and I would be hesitant to go much above 50cm before I started worrying about warp / bowing along the timber grain because of the tension of the stretched canvas. On the other hand, if you do go larger, you might get away with it if you stretch the canvas only very gently (more on that later.) 

Got some new small(ish) canvases did eh

More to come, too.

And so it goes...

I had spent a few days stretching canvases on a number of stretchers that I had scattered around the place. This included ripping the canvas off a couple of shit paintings from last year, and also stretching over and gluing canvas to some wooden boards that also used to be (shit) paintings, from a looooong time ago.

I hate painting on board for some reason.

Anyhow, I just spent all weekend gessoing and prepping the canvases:


One, two, three layers of gesso on the face, two on the sides, and two sealing the back. On top of that, two layers of thin(nish) yellow (Cadmium Yellow Light) acrylic.

I now have 15 supports of various sizes. The largest must be a good 800mm square. Some of them already have random underpainting on them.