Stretching Pre-Primed Canvas

[Juan Martinez]

Carol,

You're most welcome, and thank you for the compliments on my articles.

Best of luck with your "Boys, and Girls, in Blue" series.

Juan

[Linda Brandon]

Hi Juan,

I don't use too much pressure when I glue my panels to my completed paintings; I just throw on some big art books. My paintings are neither super-smooth nor super-chunky so I don't see scratching of varnish or flattening of impasto. (I use Gamvar varnish with some wax medium to dull the shine a litte, maybe this helps?)

Primed linen taped to a board is great for open studio settings. I am really picky about placement on paintings and I get upset at myself when I'm off an inch or so. I can recrop later to a square, oval, horizontal format, even a circle if I feel like it later on.

I have a closet full of rolled up paintings on linen. How old is too old to stretch, do you think?

(And I love your IA series, too!)

[Juan Martinez]

Thanks, Linda. Yes, I guess that care and moderation are what counts in gluing-after-the-fact. Like you, I am fussy about placement, and I have taken table-saw-to-panel quite a few times,well after a painting is finished and varnished, and am about to again. In this recent case, I have, in fact, removed the varnish but that is because I am repainting a bunch of stuff, but that's another story.

Juan