Stretching canvas, then and now

I've been stretching my own canvases since the 1970s. In art school back then nobody -- I mean NOBODY -- bought a pre-stretched canvas from an art store. It wasn't some sort of purist philosophy. It was all about money. A pre-stretched and primed canvas was a ridiculously expensive proposition. And it wasn't that we were poor students either. It really was, comparatively speaking, quite expensive.

So we learned to stretch our own. Somehow I managed to get along without a pair of canvas stretching pliers. Because I went away to school I didn't even have a regular pair of pliers at first. For a number of months what I did have were very raw knuckles. Eventually I got a pair of conventional pliers and things got easier. I think the only thing I ever used was good old "cotton duck" canvas which I then primed myself with acrylic gesso.

In recent years I have come to prefer linen as a surface on which to work. Many artists say that they prefer linen because it is archivally more resilient. While that is true, I just think most of us artists are more sensitive to some real textural differences that are of more immediate appeal. Linen is less regular; it has little flaws where the fiber is thicker or perhaps knotted. (Experts will have to forgive my ignorance of the exact nomenclature here.) But that is exactly the quality I most enjoy about linen.

With the proliferation of art supply companies, there are quite a few that sell pre-stretched and primed linens and canvases of varying sizes. I took a close look at the pricing and came to the conclusion that if I bought the materials and did the stretching myself I might save something like 42 cents over the cost of a store-bought canvas. Perhaps the art supply companies are making the most of cheap labor in Cambodia or Viet Nam. But there doesn't seem to be a way to beat their prices in any of the mid-size or small formats.

With larger canvases, it's a different story. For one thing it's more expensive to ship larger canvases even if the manufacturing cost is low. Here at least it still pays to stretch your own.

The secret to successfully stretching a smooth canvas is to work from the middle outward, alternating long and short sides. If you do this correctly, your wrinkles will migrate outward away from the gradually expanding taut area in the middle. The linen being stretched in these photos is stretched on a 36 by 48 inch frame that has been cross-braced. The stretchers and cross-bracing came from a company called GalleryPro and I bought them as I buy a great deal of my art supplies online from ASW (Art Supply Warehouse). I find they have a great selection and nearly always the lowest price I can find. And, no, I'm not paid for that endorsement.

I now have honest-to-goodness canvas pliers. It's a very worthwhile purchase, and not just to save your knuckles. By the way, don't bother getting any other kind except 100% metal pliers. Anything else (ie. plastic) will break and you'll need to replace.

Oh, one other difference between canvas then and now. It is, of course, possible to stretch a canvas too tight. Back in the 1970s when you did this it meant that the canvas might suddenly tear on the frame. Today it's more likely that the stretchers might break. The wood being sold as stretchers is not as good today.