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Question asked 2023-01-07 14:27:44 ...
Most recent comment 2023-01-12 05:16:32
Sizes and Adhesives
Dear forum members,
I'm on the verge of adopting the practice of sanding sized canvases. I can thus remove unwanted knots and irregularities in the surface. First, I put two thin coats of PVA size on the stretched fabric, sand it smooth with fine sandpaper, and lastly, I apply another two thin layers of size. This way the PVA mitigates the damage/fraying, and I have a nice smooth surface to work on. By the way, I expected a Claessens 13 fine weave canvas to have virtually no knots, but I guess it's just the way fabrics are.
The simple question is: are there any concerns with this practice that I may not foresee? Should knots be "flattened" this way? An alternative would be sanding the canvas in between lead oil ground layers, but honestly I'm not keen on trying that one.
Kind regards,
Peter
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Moderator Answer
(brian baade)
Do not sand lead white paint. I also greatly prefer to control
the smoothness of a oil ground by application (a priming knife) and the number of
coats.
I always apply size after any sanding and do not sand the
final layer. Your thoughts are good. Linen will always have some imperfections
or at least has a non-homogenous surface. In many ways, that is why I greatly
prefer it to the mechanical nature of cotton duck. For slubs, I like to place
the canvas or a stack of books etc so that any pressure from the front will not
distort the planarity of the canvas and only sand the slub itself. This allows
you to flatten the slub but not overly sand the surrounding area.
You can certainly apply an oil ground over these polymer
sizes if you want. I prefer acrylic to PVA.
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