Paint Now . . . Stretch Later?
 

What are the pros and cons of painting on canvas, and then stretching it later, a la Richard Schmid?

Sometimes, I tape a piece of canvas to a hard board, paint something, and put it aside to decide later what I'm going to do with it . . . stretch or mount.

Anyone have any, or a lot of experience with this?

So long as you use a dead-flat, stable, pre-primed canvas off the roll that neither buckles nor presents other surface problems when taped to a back-board, I can only see advantages . . . it's quick, it's easy, and gives you a lot of flexibility to choose the sizes of your projects and perhaps crop them later.

The downside is that stretching the piece over bars is more difficult once finished, and may stress the applied paint. Bending edges over the bars may upset some paint, and the work piece would have to be a minimum of 3-6" "oversize" in each direction initially when taped to the board.

Better to mount such finished pieces to panels - for example, Gatorboard, alumalite or dibond . . .

Would anyone know what to use to glue the finished pieces to panels? I was thinking of using gamblin ground to prime the back of the piece and then glue it to the primed panel with say, rabbit skin glue???

There are a number of heat-sensitive dry-mount methods in use by conservators for this purpose. The current order of the day is to use methods which are reversible with minimum stress on the artworks.

Kremer Pigments markets a water-based vinyl-acrylic adhesive (Beva-Gel) intended to replace traditional "maroflage" materials and it works quite well. Its cost is also higher than a cat's back, and the stuff is not materially dissimilar from adhesives commonly available in any paint store for installing heavier commercial type wall coverings which are chemically similar. I've used these with good effect, and see little difference between them and Beva-Gel.

One supposes the piece being mounted was adequately sized and primed before it was painted on, so priming the backside prior to mounting on a panel is superfluous. For the record, rabbit skin glue is not compatible with acrylic polymer coatings, and may or may not adhere dependably. RSG definitely does not bond to synthetic laminates like alumalite or dibond panels.

RSG is perfect for adhering raw canvas to bare wood or composite materials such as MDF, however.

Richard - you are invaluable! I didn't think it was possible to do this in an archival way (at least, I didn't think I was capable of doing it in an archival way). It also cheapens the shipping of paintings to galleries because often the galleries have the means to re-stretch or bond them to board once they arrive, and I have often started doing just a head and really felt it needed the whole body added to it, but on a 16" x 20" canvas it wouldn't quite fit!

One question leading on from this - what is the safest way to roll a canvas ( the idea came from the way stolen paintings are taken out of museums - according to Hollywood, of course; I haven't had the honour of knowing an a art thief - and rolled. It would certainly open up many countries I wouldn't even think of approaching galleries in because of the shipping expense, but rolling canvases would lessen the cost greatly.

When I say "Richard", I mean "Richards". Thanks Richard Budig for asking the question and thank-you especially, Richard Bingham for answering it in your usual brilliant way.

Aw, shucks, Thomasin! It's my pleasure to offer my experience to this forum, I hope it's helpful now and then. Over the years, I've been very fortunate to have made my living working with a very wide variety of materials and methods in painting and art-related fields.

None less than Rubens himself rolled paintings for transport! The best (only?) way is to roll the painting with the painted side outward, preferably over a rigid core, such as a card-board tube with a minimum diameter of 3". (the larger, the better!)

This way, any fine cracks that result from the stress of being bent into a roll will close up when the piece is flattened. Rolled the other way, (paint-side inside) unrolling the canvas may actually pop bits of paint off, if it's quite thoroughly dry and has become at all brittle. Of course, the older the painting, the greater the risk, since ultimately, all oil paint films will become brittle as glass (that takes over 100 years in most cases).

Thank you Richard, I appreciate ur advice, this is certainly a weight off my mind. Although painting now, dealing with it later is convenient and quick, storage is a pain when they're wet. however I found a solution to that, i strung a wire cord from one end to another end of my studio and hang my wet canvases with clips. Still all the loose canvases are a pain, i'm going to opt for painting directly on primed panels or glueing canvas to panels.

Personally, I wouldn't describe it as "perfect." Many times I get an uneven bond with patches that don't stick and pucker. This is with canvas sized with RSG glued to raw wood. I've had similar problems with PVA type glues. They're strong, but unreliable for me. I would also recommend the Beva Gel or solution, however. There's a less expensive similar product called Rhoplex that has worked well. One of the most consistently successful glues for me has been wheat paste/dextrine.

There's a good PDF article here from Golden Paints about canvas transportation and packaging, including advice on rolling a canvas. It deals mostly with acrylics, but it still applies.
http://www.goldenpaints.com/justpaint/jp11.pdf

Well, hey . . . nothing's "perfect", please excuse my over-enthusing. Bets are off with all materials when mis-application or operator error enters the equation.

I should have elaborated on that statement. By "raw", I mean clean, new canvas off the bolt, devoid of all sizes or preparations. Canvas pinned to the edges of a wooden panel, then saturated with a suitable strength of RSG, sticks like a limpet, reliably, and it's a simple procedure that's pretty hard to screw up.

I'd never recommend RSG for attaching a primed and painted canvas to a panel; mounting a "loose" painting is a different problem.

So what you're saying is heavy duty wallpaper glue would suffice re- glueing a finished lose painting to a panel??? RSG is obviously not an option for mounting finished lose canvas to a panel, so I wont do it! LOL!

...or when an experienced professional who knows what he's doing, such as myself, can't get to behave consistently. Sizing the raw canvas and board first will (sometimes) give you a better adhesion, just like joining wood. Since I'm not inclined to skin my own bunnies, I'll just move on to something that works as well or better for this application.

Lesley, most wallpaper glue these days is a premixed vinyl compound which is likely not acid free. You might find some that's made of just wheat paste powder, but it's often not readily available. You can also make a paste with pastry flour, which is lower in protein than bread flours and less appealing to bugs.

I dont know bout the flour thing, would it not eventually rot?

I wonder what Richard Schmid does with his lose paintings, does he perhaps stretch his paintings and if he mounts them on board, what does he use? interesting to know...

Not if the flour has a low gluten content, like pastry or cake flour. You need some gluten for adhesion but not much. Dry flour can become rancid in a few months, so that's another reason it's not often stocked for wallpapering. Properly made wheat paste is very archival. Freshly made paste is acidic, but calcium carbonate buffers the acids, and fungicide helps keep the bugs away. Some brands of wheat paste/starch require cooking/boiling before using (food grade,) but there are others that you just have to add water. If it's a heavy-weight canvas, I'd probably use a stronger glue.

In stead of experimenting with food stuff I would recommend a waterbased glue made for adhering Linoleum to concrete floors. That sort of glue has a low contend of water.

I made a pile of panels a year ago with linen on Masonite. I filled the rough side of the Masonite with glue by using a spatula and pressed the linen onto it with the hands. After half an hour I checked that it adhered all over, if not, I just pressed again with a finger.

Thanks for the tip, something to look into when applying fresh canvas to a panel, however, I'm wondering how to apply already painted loose canvas to a panel, any ideas? Would it work for my painted canvas?

Lesley,
it works for finished paintings also because you glue the panel and place the painting on it. You don't need to glue the painting on the back side too.

When the painting is dry to the touch you can apply it to the panel.

It might be a good idea to place a sheet of acetate over the painting when you rub with your hand and fingers to press it down.

It makes me nervous using a glue that isnt tried and tested with paintings, the last thing I need is for the worst to happen. I had primed some panels I previously used to tape my paintings with masking tape to. I sanded the panels making sure it was clear of tape and glue etc. After the panels dried, the glue from the masking tape went thru three layers of gamblin ground I had applied thickly with a spatula! Here I thought I had sanded away the glue from the masking tape. So the moral of my story is, glue is harsh. Perhaps my best bet is to stretch my paintings, I'm thinking perhaps stretch them over acid free foamboard and push pins into the sides and frame them. I painted these paintings unstretched and stretching them over stretcher bars would damage and crack or move the paint???

It's well to remember that no material or method is "fool proof". All can be mis-applied to the point of failure. What works well for one person may not give optimal results in the hands of another. We should, each of us, run our own tests to our own satisfaction !!

Painters who pose cart-before-the-horse problems have not done their "homework" in the form of running their own tests. Naturally, things like an adhesive saturating a substrate, then bleeding back through a coating (the masking tape under priming mentioned above) can be "wild cards" that arise "accidentally" regardless of one's knowledge and experience.

A well-made "young" oil painting is not a fragile item. It requires either incorporating an inordinate amount of brittle elements (such as hard resins) into paint films to make them brittle and inflexible inside of 80 years . . . painting on a "loose" canvas, then stretching it over a frame is no more problematic than stretching pre-primed canvas.