Sinking in (canvases)

I always try to be as efficient as possible with my paintings. But I’m also cheap. The combination of efficiency and cheapness has frequently caused me headaches. Instead of saving time and money, I’ve wasted both in my often wrong-footed efforts to save money.

I prefer smooth painting surfaces but instead of buying the ultra-smooth premium linen, I often buy the much cheaper cotton. Linen is 6 – 10 times more expensive than cotton so this saves A LOT of money. But as artists know, cotton canvas is not smooth. This means I have to spend time preparing the canvas surface. I justify this extra work because I manually doctor the surfaces anyway, even on premium linen. I’ve yet to see a “professionally primed” surface that suits me.

I apply an additional layer of oil ground to get “professionally primed” linen to my liking. Cotton takes 2 – 3 layers. Each layer has to dry and then get sanded. The extra time investment typically results in an adequate painting surface. But sometimes–for whatever reason–the final surface is subpar. When this happens, I won’t recognize the problem until after I start painting.

On bad canvas surfaces painting becomes a chore that requires extra time to counteract the surface’s bad qualities.

In other words, to save a buck, I waste my precious time manually preparing a mediocre surface that actually increases painting time, which means even more wasted time.

This painting, Come Along, has one of the bad surfaces. Extra work means extra paint layers which introduces new problems such as “sinking-in.” Paintings that exhibit sinking have patches that appear dull and lifeless–the “sunk” parts.

To finish the painting, I applied an isolating layer of copal varnish. The isolating layer prevents new paint from sinking into earlier layers.

Isolating layers is not something I invented. Indeed, many artists routinely use them regardless of whether or not they experience the sinking phenomenon.

Anyway, after the isolating varnish dried I was able to quickly finish the painting. If you want to use isolating varnish, thin the varnish with turpentine or alcohol. Mineral spirits can cloud the varnish which is to be avoided at all costs.

1 comment