[Today’s run: rest day]
When I was a kid I enjoyed playing in tents. In the house we would put a blanket across some chairs and play underneath, reading and doing whatever.
Somewhere along the line I got a pup-tent as a present, probably for birthday or Christmas. It was blue canvas, a bunch of stakes and two poles. I believe I actually slept in it outdoors a few times. Later I did a lot of camping with Boy Scouts and church groups and family, etc.
I still have that old blue tent, or most of it.
My wife is an oil painter. We used to buy those flat “canvas” board things for her to make her paintings on. At some point I told her that I would make a canvas for her, and I have been doing that now for a couple of years.
It starts by making a frame. I can buy “stretcher bars” which are a nice frame system that fits together and has all of the right features. But they are kind of expensive so I usually build a frame from scrap lumber. I am getting better at it. It needs to be square, and the front face needs to be somewhat narrow around the outside edge, so that the canvas makes like a drum-head. I have made a few where the canvas touches the wood for an inch or so width of the frame. That shows up in the painting later because the part with wood right behind it is different than the part without. So you want the wood-behind-canvas part to be small.
So I have been making my frames deep-wise instead of wide-wise. Not like a picture frame but more like the the front of a very shallow box. For my most recent one I built the frame first using 1×2 pine lumber, then I made a surrounding frame of 1/4 inch plywood that sticks out a bit farther front-wise.
Then you cut a piece of canvas. That’s where the tent comes in. I have been using the old blue tent for painting canvas. It works! Cut a piece about three inches wider than the frame, all the way around. Stretching the canvas is a bit tricky but I’m going to save that for another day.
Then we put on 3-4 (or more) coats of gesso, and we have a canvas ready for painting.
picture: new frame (with temporary support to keep it square), measuring for the canvas
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