The Soft Incompetence of Low Expectations
In which my old T-50 from art school dies, along with the associated instruction.
Our move to agricultural New Hampshire was prompted in part by my need for a studio. My sense of Boston’s foundering as a creative center during the pandemic was confirmed by more than one interlocutor. As one friend put it, “Boston feels like a dying planet.” But I admit that was subjective, for all of us. The dearth of available studio space was as real as it was dismal. I can name a dozen Boston-area artists who lost studios since 2020, and several of them remain confined to tabletops at home.
My new studio has a vaulted ceiling that can accommodate an easel with a 92-inch vertical load. Unfortunately, the best spot in the room for the easel with respect to the ceiling is the worst spot with respect to the floor, which slopes palpably in two directions. After tripping over various terrible shims for a month, I finally duplicated the front levelers on the rear at each side, using long bolts, wing nuts, and furniture casters to protect the floor from the steel. One of the easel wheels is missing because in the move it broke off at the solder.
This encapsulates the tenor of studio life ever since enough boxes got cleaned out to start working in it, back in October. Before I convey the wrong impression: I am grateful to be painting anywhere, to say nothing of such a beautiful space in a such a glorious locale. I have a new body of work in progress, not far enough along to show yet, but headed somewhere with enough confidence to say so. I am blessed.
Also, every step of the way has been a root canal.
After talking out some potential stretcher designs with the local woodcraft genius at the lumber yard (he was amused to be asked to consider such a novel problem), I built a stretcher out of one-by-four and quarter round. Upon assembly, it was clear that the miters were joining up idiosyncratically. (The technical term is “like shit.”) I cleaned one of the more offensive joins with a rasp, with the Joinery Devas looking down on me like I was a clinical moron, and screwed it into place if not elegance.
Later I bought a carpenter’s triangle and after a lot of sawdust determined that my miter saw came out of the box a third of a degree off of square. The chops were fine for the garden boxes I banged together the prior spring, but upon assembling eight 45-degree cuts into a rectangle, the cumulative error was enough to ruin the afternoon.
With that fixed, and the stretcher built, the time came to bust out some Belgian linen that I had on hand for just such an occasion. I might as well have been trying to stretch cheesecloth. Would the PVA fix the warps? Sort of, it turned out. Would some good priming bring it the rest of the way home? Less than you might think, it turned out. Would sponging some warm water on the reverse make it dry tighter? Not as such. Did it need a restretch? No, that worsened it. Do I actually know how to do anything in an oil painting studio?
It was at this point that the goddess whose cult I serve took pity on me and sent a boon. I received a materials grant from Oolite Arts, which occasionally doles them out to former artist residents, including those such as myself of its predecessor organization. With that act of generosity I was funded to address the problem. Linen weight is described in ounces per square yard. Mine was eight. Weights that don’t provoke existential crises start at sixteen.1 Better painters referred me to the Artfix brand, singling out a portrait weave classified as L43U, at 20.35 ounces per square yard. I went even harder, with L92C, at 22.42 ounces, nearly three times heavier than my “special occasion” bolt.2
I then discovered that I didn’t know how to stretch canvas this good. Give me my usual stock, #10 cotton duck, and I can stretch a flat canvas. This stuff was pulling back. It flopped in the stretcher like a sail. My electric stapler died. I broke out my trusty, ancient T-50. It died too.
“What is a master but a master student?” asked Rush drummer Neil Peart of blessed memory. I researched the question of how to stretch linen as if I had never known anything about it. I found that I was right - about not knowing anything. The correct way is to start tacking at the corners and work your way toward the centers of each edge.
No, really. The indispensable experts at Golden Artist Colors have a meticulous writeup on the process. That stretching technique I was taught at RISD way back when? Totally wrong.
All techniques that restrict the center body of the fabric, leaving the outer regions until last, guarantee an unsatisfactory stretching dynamic. The central threads are locked in place at the outset. As stretching and tacking continue, the fabric is resistant to respond as it is restricted in the middle and can only be stretched in the region not yet tacked. Increasing tension is built as the corners are approached. In fact, by the time the corners are reached, tension is so tight there is very little stretching that can be done at all.
Since I didn’t have the recommended pushpins, I dialed my replacement T-50 down to minimum drive (news flash for us artists of a certain age, you can adjust drive force on a modern staple gun) and did a half-sink on the staples. This was so I could remove them in case I needed to stretch any areas harder. I did, on one corner, but otherwise it landed tight as promised. Not quite as straight as I would like, because I didn’t set it up ideally, but I’ll be the only one who sees it. Golden says to give the canvas time to loosen itself again, overnight perhaps, but in this instance it has stayed solid. I’ll sink the staples with a hammer after the finished painting dries.
The moral of the story is that regular spoonfuls of humility make for finer dining when reality comes along and force-feeds you a whole bucket.
You can glue lighter fabrics to boards using PVA size, though the method is wood-intensive and all but requires a decent setup with a table saw. Stretching them is an enormous hassle.
Jerry’s Artarama conveniently lists the linens by weight. They have the advantage over Blick in this case. I was also referred to SoHo Art Materials for their impressive stock of linens, listed likewise, though in metric. For the record, GPSM = OPSY * 34, roughly, and OPSY = GPSM / 34.
Great piece! What's especially humbling is thinking that you were taught something incorrectly, but after researching it, about half-way through you suddenly realize that your teacher HAD taught you it that way. And at that moment you recall how "it seemed liked way too much trouble" to your younger self, and so you ignored it in favor of whatever inferior shortcut you devised. This has come back to haunt me in various amusing ways several times over the years...
Ah, the travails of setting up shop in a new locale, I know them well. When I lived in Mexico I literally had to fly back to the States, sell my house, buy my Pathfinder, pack up my table saw, drive to Guanajuato and set up the table saw on the roof, because you could not get carbide-tipped saw blades there, and even the local carpenter diva, who sexually harassed me, couldn't build an acceptable stretcher.
I can't believe you are stapling the SIDES of your canvas. Staple the back, miter the corners, and tape the edges. It makes framing optional.