Canvas Work Today

Yep, that's Ben Willmore trying to hide from his students behind a vintage Corvette.

Today is all about canvas at the school. As many of you know we offer limited canvas printing and finishing services to our clients. We specialize in the very popular gallery wrap technique.

We run canvas classes every now and again whether taught by Hal or with visiting instructors like Randy Hufford from Maui. Overall, the process is fairly simple. We first optimize the image in Photoshop and then create a canvas extension for the gallery wrap process. Whether we use a mirror method or a few different techniques is determined by the image itself and what will look best.

We print the image on Smooth Matte Canvas made by Premier Art (http://www.premierart.info/.) We have had the best and very consistent results with this canvas. A few hours after printing, I will coat the canvas with Premier Art's Eco Print Shield. The product is a water based coating that give the print true archival characteristics. Once coated, the print is water and wine resistant (in actuality it is almost water proof), the ink will not crack nor flake when stretched, and UV/Ozone resistant. Normally it takes about three coats of the Shield to finish the print.

After a short drying time, I stretch the canvas around 1.5" stretcher bars using the Tensador II canvas stretching machine. For most prints, use of the machine reduces the total stretching time to about 5 minutes, not too shabby. With a simple workstation near our studio, I can stretch multiple canvases per hour and have them ready for the finishing touches shortly thereafter.

We add a 3/16" piece of Fome Core to the back of the print to ensure the canvas will be protected. All that is left is to screw in some hangers and wire and the print is finished.

So that's what is happening around here today as I work several 24 x 30s and 16 x 24s.

Take care and hope to see you soon.

Cheers!