There is no hard and fast rule
actually concerning what to use as support or surface for your oil painting. By this I
mean you could paint on any surface that has been well treated for the purpose
of painting on, and these supports may range from very cheap paper to wood, and
to expensive canvas. The bottom line is that the surface must be well treated
or prepared before you set out to paint.
Quality Control
The point in all of these is that
you make sure the oil from your oil paint is not sucked up by the surface; you
do not want to see the oil from your pigment sinking to the back of your
support and leaving the pigment flaking off or looking like chalk afterwards.
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| 'Mobile' (oil/canvas) by Morgan Nwanguma |
Another important thing you must
guard against is that if your painting surface is not well primed or prepared,
you are likely to end up having your painting cracking in no distant time. You
must make sure to avoid this because it could lead to a very big embarrassment
and also able to badly soil your reputation as an artist. How will you feel if
perhaps you have just produced what you term as a masterpiece and before long
you or even worse still, your patron reports that he has observed crackles in
your painting which he just bought the previous year?
Every practicing artist I dare
say, will be damned to see this happen to him or her; it will be most unethical
and unacceptable for a professional. To avoid this sort of embarrassment I will
now take you through a simple process of priming or preparing your canvas that
you could undertake at home, in your studio by yourself. But if you can afford
to buy the ready primed canvas from your art store, good for you, yet this is a
skill every (professional) artist ought to know right from art school.
