Choosing Your Surface for Oil Painting
Katie LiddiardDescription
As an oil painter, you have many choices for surfaces to paint on. Begin by asking yourself if you want to paint on a stretched canvas or on a panel. Artist and instructor Katie Liddiard breaks down the differences between these two painting experiences and the advantages and disadvantages of each. First, a stretched canvas is lightweight and easy to move around, because the canvas is stretched over an open wooden frame of stretcher bars. A panel, on the other hand, is more dense, with canvas adhered to a solid piece of wood that can be thin or as much as an inch thick to safeguard the wood from warping. Depending on the size of the panel, that can add quite a bit of weight to the painting.
You’ll also have many options for the size of a stretched canvas from very large to very small, Katie says, without ever adding too much weight to the painting overall (note that large canvases may require additional wooden crossbars for stability). Larger panels, comparatively, will be heavier and more awkward to work as you go up in size, and you may hit size limitations that you could overcome with canvas. A stretched canvas can also be removed from its stretcher bars and rolled, while clearly that wouldn’t be an option with a panel. Panels have their strong points, however. The back is fully protected, while a canvas’s open back is exposed to air and moisture that can possibly compromise the paint film. Katie will often choose a panel when longevity and archival integrity are important for the artwork.
When you're choosing a surface to paint on, there are a lot of different options out there. But one of the basic questions you need to ask yourself is whether you wanna be painting on a stretched canvas or a panel. It is really imperative that you understand the differences, the benefits and drawbacks of both before you make your decision. I'm Katie Liddiard, and I'm gonna help you make that decision. The stretch canvas is really great for keeping the painting light and able to move around easily. There's not a whole lot of weight to it because the back here, the wood, is not as dense as it would be with a panel. With the panels, you can get really thick wood too, up to an inch sometimes, so that the panel itself doesn't warp when being painted on. The problem with that is that adds a lot of weight. So if you need to transport your paintings anywhere, it can be kinda cumbersome. The other benefit of a stretch canvas is that you have a lot of different options for size. You can have really, really big, feet upon feet, or you can have a very small option as well, while adding very little weight overall. But if you tried to do that with a panel, it would get extremely heavy and cumbersome to try and move. The other benefit of a stretch canvas is that you can take it off its stretcher bars, roll up the painting, and transport it that way, where with a panel, you can't do that. So why would anyone choose a panel? The great thing about panels is that there is nothing that's going to get into the back of it. As you can see with the stretch canvas, it's wide open to the air. So moisture, air, any elemental changes is going to affect the painting on the front. That's where you're gonna get a lot of cracking and kind of compromise the paint film on the canvas, where with the panel, you're not going to get any of that. So for archival reasons, longevity reasons, I always choose a panel to paint on.
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