I bought good quality, deep edge stretcher bars, enough to make 30 canvases and set about stretching and priming them over the summer months. Summer was time to explore and observe landscape afresh without the confines of deadlines and a working schedule. This opened me up to taking long walks around the neighbouring countryside with my partner, snorkelling and swimming, and generally taking in as much as I could that nature had to offer while making time daily to prepare my painting supports.
With priming each canvas between twelve and fifteen times each, it took its time! I have often had doubts if such laborious preparation has been worth the while. Only time will tell if my efforts have not been a total waste of time! My thoughts are to prepare enough canvases for the academic year to come, so I calculated carefully how many I would need to paint on over the year, taking into account the relatively hit-and-miss painting process I work with.
I had fully prepared a smaller batch of canvases ahead of the rest of them in order to make tests and adjustments. Layers going up in multiples of three, going from six to fifteen. I was most happy with the two twelve and fifteen so that is where I set my bench mark for the rest of them.
In the final tests I sanded the canvas surface with wet-and-dry, the buffed the surface to gain – to my astonishment, a mirror like surface in which I could see my own reflection. This really excited me as I found the surface to be possibly more smooth and even as the photo-film I was using in the cliche verre.
I took one of these canvases through a test drive with paint. The results were absolutely fabulous! I left this painting for 2 months to observe the drying process. To my disappointment the paint did not hold to the surface well enough to work into or add subsequent layers. I backtracked on all the canvases and purposefully left a slight rough to them so they hold the paint better.
Finally my hard work paid off it seems and I hope the paint stays indefinitely on the surface. I pushed the paint to it’s absolute limit and took a step back. My ongoing thoughts are that there may be other methods I could adopt in the preparation stages that mean I can have the canvas as a mirror-like surface.
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