Stretching the canvas

For stretching the canvas you need a smooth linen or leather. Leather is more expensive than linen but it doesn't need to be prepared with gesso. Leather is also more resistible to weather conditions, damage, and fire. Linen is more flexible but leather is smoother. Linen is more popular among artists and it's much affordable than leather.

In the picture you can see the tools we need to stretch a canvas: the canvas frame, enough linen for all the frames you have, a manual nail gun, and safety gloves.

if you are a female artist, it's better to ask for a male's help because stretching the canvas needs physical strength and it might hurt your hands. you start by putting the frame above the linen and cutting the linen around the frame leaving 2 cm from each side enough to be fold around the wooden bars. After that you fix the linen on the back side of one of the short bars as following:

 after you finish this side you move to the opposite bar and stretch the linen as much as you can and fix the cloth from the middle of the wooden bar.

you continue stretching and fixing the linen on this side and then you move to one of the long bars and stretch moderately making sure that you keep some cloth for the obverse bare.

next you fold the extra linen on the corners neatly and fix it then move to the last side stretching the linen hard and fixing it from the middle then doing the rest without forgetting the corners. The result is a stretched canvas that has a surface similar to the one of a drum.

you repeat the same process to all the canvas frames that you have and wait to next Saturday to see how you're going to gesso these frames.

All the best
Ola :)