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A Stretched Canvas to avoid

One of my student brought a stretched artist canvas made by Paintwell to our art class asking why her paint will not stick to this canvas. I was baffled to, as this canvas stated that is was tripple primed with Gesso and suitable for acrylic painting

My student had prepared the canvas the day before by covering the whole canvas with Atelier Acrylic paint as a back ground she wanted to use for the lesson. The finished looked and felt sticky and plastic with a very glossy sheen. Normally acrylic dries dull. Just to be on the safe side my student painted the surface with a new layer of acrylic.  As I felt that the new layer of acrylic paint was applied to thick we tried too remove some of it. That’s when we noticed that also the already dried under paint was being removed.

Quickly we wanted to wash off the last layer of paint and all paint layers come off. We dried the clean canvas with a hairdryer and this time we covered it wit three layers of Gesso, dried with a hairdryer between layers. The result was again a very glossy sticky surface that wouldn’t take another layer of acrylic paint. That’s when we gave up  and I recommended to return the canvas.

Luckily the shop where my student had bought these stretched canvas fully refunded her the cost of $3.90 per canvas as these canvases clearly are not useful for the purpose they were sold. You might want to avoid buying this brand to safe yourself a lot of heartache.


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