Staining or underpainting a canvas

There are a few benefits to staining a canvas i.e. painting out the entire white surface before beginning an image. To start with it acts as a warm up both physically with the act of mixing and applying a colour, warming up your hands, wrists and arms and mentally in conquering the plain white surface and sometimes overcoming any creative block you may experience from time to time.

Secondly staining the white can help to read colours better as they can often look different against a white background. Remember your background will shine through the early layers of paint that you lay down and you may want to leave some small areas exposed, so you will need to choose your stain according to the look that you want. You could choose a bright colour or an earthy tone depending on your style of painting. I personally like to use a neutral earthy pink tone, a bit like 'Potters Pink' which I mix using titanium white, with burnt sienna and a small amount of raw umber, this gives a nice warmth to my paintings . Whatever colour you choose try to use a mid tone, as this will help you to judge the darks and lights in your painting more easily.

I tend to use acrylic paint mixed with a small amount of water for the under layers as it dries quickly and I often like to work over a dry underlayer. However, you could also use oil paint diluted with thinners, such as Jacksons low odour thinners or similar. This would work well if you wanted to use a rag to sketch your image into the wet paint and would allow wet into wet painting over the top.

To apply my underlayer I first wet the canvas with water using a spray bottle.

Then apply my slightly watered down paint to the wet canvas using a flat wide brush or a sponge applicator to coat the whole surface and sides. This is just the first layer so don't worry if the paint seems thin at this stage.

Please refer to my materials page for the items I use in my work.

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