At the time of making the painting Doroteja in a Fishbowl, I was living and working in Lithuania. It turns out that, even though there is no shortage of art supplies in this country, there are no canvas fabrics on sale that would not be already primed.
When I inquired by email my former technician tutor from university, he advised to attempt to find it once more because he had a lot of trouble stretching the already primed canvas on the stretcher frame.
So I came up with the idea of browsing online for textile shops. This way I learned a lot about the right canvases for painting.
The tutor recommended me to find this type of canvas.
Cotton duck means a densely woven cotton.
The fabric must be natural, i.e. not coloured or washed out.
12oz – in this case means that it weighs 12 ounces per 1 square metre. According to my tutor’s recommendation, I can choose a canvas weighing 8oz and more. In Lithuania, everything is calculated in different units, so I needed to recalculate the measurements.
8-12 ounces per yard = 227-340 grams per yard = 190-285 grams per square metre.
After researching Lithuanian market online, I did not find a densely woven cotton fabric or a heavy one. So I began searching for linen alternatives. I found heavy and natural linen fabrics in Lithuanian market on the following websites:
Fortunately, the heaviest linen fabrics were in a store very close to Klaipeda (where my studio is located). There I found two appealing options:
https://www.lovelin.lt/Produktas/audiniai/Lininis-audinys-3L310ttps://www.lovelin.lt/Produktas
https://www.lovelin.lt/Produktas/audiniai/Lininis-audinys-3L280TW
I bought the latter option because its weight was good enough, while other option had a “evergreen tree” weaving texture, which might be visible even after priming.
This linen fabric, to my surprise, was lighter to the cotton canvas which I was used to working at university. In addition, the surface of the fabric was not very smooth, i.e. it had a lot of lint, and the threads themselves were not very densely woven.
What does that mean? This is a small problem. To compensate, it was necessary to apply more layers of primer (I did seven), and after each painted and dried layer, diligently sand the surface of the stretched canvas with sandpaper.
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