How to Paint with Acrylic Or Oil - Priming Your Canvas for Painting

Hey, So we going to look at how we can prepare our canvases for painting with acrylic or oil base paints. Now this canvas has already been given one coat of Gesso ´Primer´ which you can use oil or acrylic paints with it. You can buy this ´Gesso´ from any good art store, it doesn’t have to be ´the brand´ Talents, it could be any local brand, but it will be the same stuff. What this dose, ´The Gesso, Primer´ because I’ve painted many times without putting my own primer on, because the canvases are normally factory primed. The problem is the canvases have never been primed that well, and the do still have little horrible pin holes and when you look against the light once you stretched your canvas you do see areas where the light shows through, and that quite annoying. I’ve also noticed you end up using more of your good paint because the primer that’s originally on there is just sucking up your paint, you end up having to put more paint on and build it up until you canvas is smooth enough. So I have got in to actually putting my own primer and it is worth it. So what we’ve done is given it one coat ´of Gesso, primer´ then because this painting is going to be very detailed I’m preparing it for a car painting, so I want the canvas to be as smooth as possible. So I´m just going to give with a fine Sanding block a slight sand. Just very gently, just like this. You not going crazy, you not really taking that much off, But you are getting out any hairs, dust bumps. Just helps it smooth it out. Then I’ll give it another coat of primer after. So once you sand the canvas to what you feel is appropriate, depending on how fine you want your work to be. then it’s a good idea to just to give with a damp cloth, not wet just a damp cloth, just to give it a wipe down. this will just take up any dust that’s been left on the canvas. there’s not a lot of dust on there, but it’s better to get it off. Then once that’s done, we going to apply the Gesso ´primer´ Now you don’t water this down, because it would kind of defeat the object, if you watered it down. Because the idea is you want it to keep a little thick because that helps to level out the painting If you watered it down too much then it would just soak in and you not going to get rid of them ugly bumps and pin holes. So just put it on, I find putting it on in this fashion, I’ve seen some artists say you have to put it on in up and down strokes. I don’t think so I find this works the best, in all different angles. As if you was painting a wall in the olden days before rollers came out, I wasn’t alive then. but this is what I got told when I was a apprentice. You put it on like this as when you do so in different directions, it pushes the paint into the little spaces. And you will cover the canvas more equally. Just like that. (Squeaking chair, needs oil) And there you go, it’s very simple. If you felt that you wanted your canvas even smoother you can repeat the process until the desired Finish is achieved. I’m going to wait until this is dry, and then I´m going to see how it looks. Then maybe give it a sanding after and then repeat the process. Because I do want this canvas to be as smooth as possible, because imp going to have to get a lot of fine detail in there for the Car painting. And the last thing you want is a doggy canvas with lumps and bumps. But is it actually looking good so far, so once its dried and I have a feel ill Probably just start getting into the painting.