The Canvas: Size

The first step in painting using oils is knowing the sizes of the canvas you're going to paint on, structuring it, stretching it, and preparing it with gesso. Canvas shapes vary a lot. They can come in rectangular, round, triangular, square and actually any shape. A canvas could take the shape of the subject being painted such as a fish or a cat. However, rectangular canvas is the most popular because it fits the walls and furniture of rooms and it also can be used with landscape, portraits and abstract paintings.

Thus, all that you have to do is buying a ready-made canvas or follow me to know how to make your own canvas with these steps:

1. determining the size

2. stretching the canvas

3. preparing it with gesso

Today we'll talk about canvas size and frame. The size of canvas could be the sixe of a notebook , a wall or the facade of a whole building. The bigger the canvas, the more you can control the details in the painting and vice versa. when the canvas is small, it requires more talent, patience and preciseness. To make it easier for you, I'll show you the most popular canvas sizes that art collectors prefer.

 The table shows that sizes 27x35  & 40x50 are the most popular for small canvas whereas sizes  91x121 & 76x 101 are the most popular regarding a large canvas.  However, the criteria for choosing the size of the canvas is the subject of the painting and the size of the wall you want to hang it on. For your first paintings i recommend medium size canvas because they are suitable for different paining topics, you finish paining in relatively a short time, they don't need costly large size brushes and you can use any wall as an easel for them without suffering to reach all of the canvas parts. 

After deciding on the canvas size you need to ask the carpenter to make you a couple of canvas frame the sizes you want. You have to be aware of the following:

1. the wooden bars should be thick enough to endure stretching and thin enough to avoid marking the paining area.

2. the wooden frame should have corners to hold the sidebars together while stretching the canvas.

3. the corners should be similar to corners no4 for small canvas and corners no. 1 or no.3 for large canvas.   

corners no. 1 are really good for medium and not very large canvas

corners no.2 are usually used with small canvas but they usually leave marks in the clothe of the painting side.

corners no.3 are the perfect solution for really large canvas.

corners no.4 are the better substitution to corners no.2 and are suitable to small and medium canvas. 

Next Saturday we're gonna talk about stretching the canvas.

All the best

Ola :)