i would really love to learn how. It seems I am always wanting to paint weird sized paintings, and I can never find them, or at least I sure do have a hell of a time!

Unless you’re an art star and have assistants to do it for you, eventually if/when Art becomes a serious vocation/avocation, ya gotta become proficient at “the craft” and all that includes- including stretching a canvas. It contributes to the aesthetic/”finished” appearance of the work. The cost is relative…….

It just takes practice
There are a ton of books with visuals one can buy or peruse at your local library and a gazillion step-by-step instructions with visuals on the net.

Then…..maybe some day you can hire some hungry college kid to do it for you.

[FONT=Times New Roman]I like to stretch my own canvases, for one the size of the panel progects the image, two for permanancy reasons, pre-stretched have inferior staples and cheap material, I prefer a 11oz atleast, can be mixed duck and synthetic with medium texture for holding modeling well. I prefer heavey duty bars for tight stretching and strength which they call a gallery wrap so if need be i dont have to frame to show, but most importantly to have that extra distance between painting and end of canvas in case I choose to ship unframed, it leaves plenty of room for restretching, I like to make my gesso as pure as possible to protect my whites from the cloth up.[/FONT]

Until recently I bought pre-stretched canvas or made canvas on masonite pannels. I wanted some other than standard sizes so ordered and received a bunch of stretcher bars in various sizes from ASW online… They were very cheap per pair. I am a woodworker so is seemed like a logical choice, and I already had the air stapler etc. Price wise, I can make a canvas for about 1/4 or less than the local craft or art store sells them for, so it is cost effective. I like the odd sizes and the fact I can say I did it myself.
-marc

The only time I’ve had a problem with warping is with ultra cheap pre-stretched canvases where the thickness of the stretcher strips was too light for the distance spanned, and no cross bracing was used. So don’t exceed the strength of the bar, and you should be fine. Any good guide to stretching canvas should give you an idea of the required strip weight vs. canvas size and weight, and when to use cross bars.

If you’re not doing more than twenty or thirty canvases, you might find it more economical to just continue buying them pre-stretched, especially if you can order them someplace cheap like Curry’s. Good canvas pliers can be expensive (the lighter the weight the better, and get padded handles!), and there’s the cost of a staple gun, too. I’ll probably do over 100 canvases this year, so for me, the savings are huge if I stretch my own. But if I was only doing a few canvases a year, I think I’d just buy them pre-rolled.

Noma

I voted no. The small amounts of money I save are not worth the time, the bother, and the aggravation that I go through when trying to get it just right. For instance, I hate having to make sure the thing is at perfect right angles.

And I agree with Deefox, I believe it was, who said that the time can be better spent painting.

Some people are really good at it and want to do it, and that’s fine. If I have old stretcher bars left from a bad painting, I might stretch a canvas over it. But I doubt if I’ll buy any more bars just to stretch canvas.

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