Monday, October 3, 2011

How I prepare my canvases

You want to know how to prepare your canvases "Valentina's style"? Here my simple tutorial ;)
I love to do this to my canvases because, ONE, I need a really smooth surface to apply the ink to my drawings and TWO, because I love the texture of the canvas after doing this!.

The Ingredients:

ingredientes

- Plain canvases. Also, if you have a old painting you don't liked more, or you are not so happy with what you did, you can reuse that canvas. I do that ALL THE TIME :)
- You will need flour and water
- Pieces of paper. I use whatever I have around. Recycling papers. brown craft paper and mostly all the beautiful unsolicited mail I get EVERY DAY.
- Football game (optional) Well, you can switch this ingredient for whatever you want to watch in the TV or music if you want. I made these canvases yesterday... and that means Football Day in this house.

1.- Cook the "glue". I'm not so sure how you call this, I call it "engrudo". You need one part of flour and 5 or 6 parts of water. I'm not the "engrudo" master, but my cooking system is: Mix the cold water with the flour, put in the stove medium, heat, and stir frequently until you reach a tick consistence. Let the mix cold down.

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2.- Setup all the ingredients to start the party. As you can see, I covered the floor with some paper because it's a dirty party.

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3.- Dip a piece of paper in the flour+water mix.

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4.- Cover your canvas.

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5.- Let the canvas dry.

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6.- And next day... Voila! Ready to paint!

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Easy, right?

Let me know if you have any question.

Happy Monday!

9 comments:

Katie said...

Your tutorial couldn't be more timely as I have plans to DIY some art for more living room. Thanks!

aimee said...

this is awesome! thanks for being so open about your process, valentina -- i love that about you. and i am quite intrigued by your "engrudo" cooking!

nicole : three by sea said...

Oh, I have a couple of canvases shoved in the closet that could use a "do over" such as this- lol! Thanks so much for sharing!

Anonymous said...

I can't wait to give this a try. Thank you so much for sharing your technique!

Virginia N.K. said...

Teacher!! Teacher! teacher! (sounds like me at age 6) I have a Q. Could you go ahead for a newbie in this area? After doing all that fantastic work, do you paint or sketch on them? No Question is silly Q. smile!

/Your fun from Sweden

THE BROWN BOYS said...

i was so excited to see Aimee from artsyville share this link on her facebook for your tutorial, because I'm a big fan of your work! thanks for the glimpse inside your process! I love your end result, but am not sure I want to go through the messy process!!! do you ever use decoupage glue -mod-podge - instead of the flour/water mixture? and how does it compare? going to share with our facebook fans as well!

Valentina Harper said...

Thanks for the comments!
VG, I will show in other post the next steps after the "messy" process.

Jill, I have use mod podge, but I'll give it a try! I'm just a little bit worry about how the paint and ink are going to react with the mod podge.

Virginia N.K. said...

Thanks alot, I appreciate.

Lindsay Satchell said...

Thank you for sharing your process! Do you gesso or paint it all white before you start drawing? Or some other process? Thanks!