The Work Goes N Before the Paint Goes On

With life giving us the need to have a job that pays I seldom have the time during the school year to paint what I want to paint. Not to be redundant but one must be ready for what time one has to actually change into ones painting clothes and get out their and work on a canvas. To be ready I try to make some canvases rather large canvases before I find the time comes in which I can go on out and create. Doing this requires some time spent in my studio where I store my work making the canvases from stretchers and raw cotton duck and gesso. This takes three coats of gesso (gesso is a combination of rabbit skin glue and titanium white paint which is non-toxic) to make the canvas oil paint ready. Without this stuff the paint would soon rot the cotton duck that canvas is made of, so we coat it with gesso first before applying paint to the surface. It takes the good part of an afternoon to make a canvas, but once its done the actual painting on it can wait for a very long time. And so I plan ahead and make a few canvases and then I will be ready to head out once it warms up some and the days lengthen. My car can handle up to a forty nine inch canvas at least in its width the length can be much more perhaps up to six feet or sixty four inches or so. In the spring I will pack up a canvas and then my paints and brushes and head on out to an undisclosed location (only because I have no idea where I will go at this point) then after a days work I may either choose to finish it up at home if not much more is needed to be done or go back to the location and set up all over again. Nothing beats actually painting on location in order to get a good idea of what more an canvas needs. Reality is the best teacher of sight and knowing what and how to create a convincing scene for a painting.