How to Prepare Quality Homemade Primer and Canvas

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.

'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.

Morgan Nwanguma

INTERVIEW:

‘My race against time’

– By Yetunde Oladeinde, Arts & Life, The Nation Newspaper

Art is beauty; it is the gem of life. Art fuels your power of perception and vision; and how wonderful it is to emulate God in the art of creativity. The artist connects with nature, the sublime terrains of the universe, and the community because he is the mirror of society. “He maybe a prophet sometimes crying and screaming in the wilderness for those who care to listen. He is a friend of the muse. What can be more exhilarating?” asked Morgan Nwanguma rhetorically as he takes Yetunde Oladeinde into his world

Tell us about some of your works.

I practice in various mediums and modes of expression, all culminating in making me a well rounded creative agent – a complete artist: My creative energies find expressions in the visual arts such as painting, graphics designing, etc. On the other hand, I am a poet and creative writer with a couple of unpublished books lying on the shelves for now.  As a painter my works are rendered in two major mediums – oil painting and watercolours. My watercolours are a celebration of spontaneous colours and ‘happy accidents’, in which you capture the fleeting moments, your patience is put to test while you take a breath of fresh air in visual poetry as I usually refer to my works in that whimsical medium of expression.  

Oil painting affords me the freedom to express hard and deep concepts. I am able to execute concepts on a larger scale and of course a more durable format such as the canvas. The oil medium no doubt is the king of painting or two dimensional medium of expression. But in all, my paintings and drawings in whatever medium, will cut across impressionistic, and semi-abstract expressions most of the time. Sometimes too I would also delve into the surreal when there is the urge to express some ethereal impulses. One of my favourite paintings in this mode is the one I titled ‘Time is against you’. It is a race against time, and we are all involved in it. Therefore whatever is there to be done must be done right now, because you lose this moment, it is gone forever.

What are some of the exhibitions and projects in which you have participated?

I have had the privilege of having my works shown in various parts of the country and a few times abroad. My works also are proudly adorning so many private homes in Nigeria. Some adorn the walls of corporate entities as well as galleries. In foreign lands I am proud also to say that my works are in private collections in places such as – USA, Russia, Spain, Kenya, Venezuela, Taiwan, U.K., and Germany. My most memorable exhibition so far is my third solo show at DIDI Museum, Victoria Island in 1999, titled ‘Lyrical Expressions’. I am also a curator, and so have handled quite a few curatorial projects for group shows. A good example of these is ‘The Pains, The Tears, The Regrets’ - an art exhibition on violence against women by (LRRDC), also in 1999, at the National Museum in Lagos.

I Remember Gani Odutokun

Gani Odutokun was one of the most talented, prolific and inspiring artists to come out of Nigeria this century. Gani was my lecturer and a great inspirer and motivator that had an unending strong influence on many of us who were privileged to have had training under him. His untimely death in a car crash in February of 1995 meant the loss of one of Nigeria's pioneers of Modern African art. Could it be just an irony of fate – Gani loved ‘accidents’? Thus his latter works were results of happenstance, and 'happy' accidents, from which he derived his unique liquidized oil painting technique. 

'Dry earth'  - liquidized (oil) painting by Gani Odutokun