![]() Part of it was the convenience – cutting a panel was quicker than stretching a canvas. Eventually, I found myself using panels more than canvas. ![]() I started experimenting with ½ inch Baltic Birch plywood panels in the early ‘90s. They will likely outlast us and the collector without appreciable problems. So, if you love to paint on stretched canvas, keep at it. For us ‘seasoned’ oil painters, who really cares if our paintings last more than 50 years – how many things in this world last longer than that anyway? That’s something to consider for a young whipper snapper just beginning their career. According to, cotton canvas loses half of it’s tensile strength within 50 years and continues degrading after that. Cotton is not as durable as linen, but both will hold up fine through our lifetime – maybe. Many professional artists prefer linen, but cotton canvas is also wonderful to paint on. As long as the canvas is sealed you can put any oil product on it – primer or paint. If you love using lead oil primer then simply add that over the acrylic gesso. Some suggest GAC products, but you can also simply use acrylic gesso which is less expensive than the GAC products. Hide glues are hygroscopic and there are much better alternatives today. If you plan to keep using canvas and want to prepare, stretch, and lead prime them on your own, do yourself a favor and skip the rabbit-skin glue process. It may not be as strong as lead for oil painting, but as far as researchers know today, acrylic gesso is overall a good oil painting primer. Research today shows that a lead ground is actually the strongest ground for oil painting, but at the time it was a great incentive to use the non-toxic acrylic gesso. I stopped making lead-primed canvases in the mid ‘90s because of the toxic solvents that were involved and because I read a paper by an art conservator who said that acrylic emulsion grounds (commonly called acrylic gesso) outperformed traditional lead and oil grounds. Unfortunately, some of the linen and cotton fabrics are not made as well today, or are relatively much more expensive. The few canvases I still have are as tight as a drum and in excellent condition. When I used cotton canvas it was always the heavier 12 oz. We put together wooden stretcher strips, stretched the canvas tight, applied rabbit-skin glue, and then primed the canvas with a lead oil primer. My dad and I prepared lead primed linen canvases ourselves. Through most of the 1980s & ‘90s I painted on linen and cotton canvas. The Surfaces I have used for Oil Painting Canvas Paint directly on the paper or cover with acrylic gesso. For smaller-budget studies and experimenting use watercolor paper or any sketch paper. New Traditions also has rolls of Linen to purchase: L280 84” x 6 yardsĩ. ![]() Italian Art Store (for larger paintings too big for panels): Med Weight w Super Even Finish Belgian Linen Lead Primed or one of their other lead primed linen canvas rolls ( you will need to stretch it yourself)Ĩ. New Traditions L600 on Gatorfoam (smooth texture)ħ. New Traditions L280 on Gatorfoam (medium texture) orĦ. Art Board Natural Fiber Painting Panelsĥ. Here is a list of some oil painting panels and canvases I recommend for landscape and flower paintings:ġ. ![]() A Quick List of Oil Painting Panels & Canvases I’ll share with you what I’ve painted on over the past 30 years, and what a lot of professional oil painters today like to use, and what science says is the best thing to use for the long-term survival of our paintings.īefore I get into the nuts and bolts of oil painting panels and canvases, I will give you a list of products I recommend so you can get right to painting. Then I’ll tell you the pros and the cons to each of them. The first thing that I want to do is share with you the top surfaces that artists use today for oil painting. There are also a lot of opinions out there about what works and what doesn’t. What oil painting panels, canvases and primers do you prefer? When it comes to oil painting, there are a lot of things that we can paint on – linen or cotton canvas, wood, plastic, or aluminum panels, just to name a few.
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