Finding Quality Canvas Can Be Dirty Work

For the past three years, I have dabbled in watercolors and oil paints.  This dabbling has led to art shows, countless exhibits, commissioned pieces for family and friends, and a unique lifestyle that has all the amazing perks an aspiring artist can imagine!  It has also led to the frustrating task of finding quality canvas!

If you’ve been searching for the best canvas at the most reasonable price then you already know what I mean… or maybe you don’t.  There are certain things that all aspiring and professional artists have to look out for when selecting the perfect canvas for the perfect artistic endeavor.

Here a few insider tips that I would like to offer to you that will not only save you time, but lots of dollars!

Tip 1 – Don’t Worry About Stretching Canvas Yourself

Stretching canvas may not be the most difficult thing in the world but it is time consuming and can take much practice if you’re inexperienced or simply do not have enough time to learn how to do it yourself.  In this case, you will need to purchase pre-stretched canvas.

I recommend relying on a professional company that sells pre-stretched canvas to established artists.  I purchase from various art supply companies in my hometown and online vendors.

Tip 2 – Beware of the Notorious Warped Canvas

That’s right, my friend.  The warped canvas is your worst enemy!  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve finished a near perfect painting, let it dry, and a few hours later the wooden frame is bowed.  My heart races, my palms sweat profusely, and I get annoyed because my canvas has expanded and contracted – warping my potential masterpiece into a broken idea.

To avoid this, I look for canvas with a stretcher that runs down the middle of the frame.  The middle stretcher provides stability and does not allow the canvas to bend the wooden frame that it is wrapped around.

Tip 3 – Buy Wholesale Canvas

Being a professional artist is incredibly rewarding but to reap the benefits of such rewards, you have to keep the costs of your artistry down buy investing your dollars in canvas that is affordable and easy to find.  Wholesale options are the best that I’ve found, and often the best quality for those of us who do not want to bother with the hunt from quality.

This will save you time money and keep your stress levels down when an unexpected call to paint paint paint dials in!

Keep on painting, my friend!

The whirr and crunch of machines provide a soundtrack for a light billow of sawdust scenting the air in the warehouse. Rows of wooden planks, soon to be cut into stretcher bars, sit by hundreds of canvas rolls, miles of protective wrap and a never-ending stream of new, freshly stretched canvses. The loud, punchy sound of a pneumatic staple gun bursts out in frequent, somewhat consistent blasts, punctuating the time and mixing with the sound of the machines to give the place a rhythm. Workers of many types perfectly executing their respective tasks, each different from the next and all important. You’re in our warehouse, a place of sounds, sights and smells, and you’re about to see how a canvas takes its journey from a simple wish in your mind to a package at your door.

Of course, before anything is stretched, we have to receive an order! While we do keep a large amount of canvases in stock in the most popular sizes, as well as those we use for our sister company’s prints, many of our customers order very specific sizes that we actually produce as they’re needed. Our quick and accurate production process is capable of a turnaround time that’s remarkably efficient and fast (so fast we often surprise our clients!). When you order, either online or over the phone, it’s processed by our professional customer service and processing agents in our offices, where we have a powerful computing system that keeps track of all the orders.

These orders are then sent to the warehouse, where the requested canvases are either pulled from our backstock or crafted almost immediately. To stretch your canvas, we first take one of our hundreds of rolls of pre-primed canvas, and use specialized machines to cut it to exact, perfect specifications for your canvas, which is somewhat larger than the final piece in order to leave room for stretching.

We then produce a wooden frame of the correct size for the canvas. We cut our own stretcher bars in shop, using highly-accurate saws that are worked by trained professionals. Each frame requires that we cut four stretchers with corners specially designed to fit together to create the rectangular frame. As we mentioned in our previous post, we use a machine called an underpinner to efficiently put the corners of the frame together, creating a gorgeous frame for the canvas.

From there, the cut canvas and frame are taken by our expert canvas stretchers, who use pneumatic staple guns, staples and stretching pliers to ever so carefully and exactly stretch the canvas over the frame and then staple it in place. This is the heart of the whole process, and it requires an especially professional touch and years of practice to get right. That’s why we hire only the best stretchers around, and also why you can be sure that you’re getting the best possible canvas when you order from us.

After the canvas is stretched, it goes into an almost equally important and exact process of being prepared for shipping. This involves wrapping it in a very specific manner with protective materials, which are taped so that they will ensure protection through the entire shipping process. We then put the canvas in a perfectly sized box, which makes certain that the canvas can’t rattle around in the box during shipping. Since we create so very many custom sized canvases, this requires having quite a few different sizes of boxes on hand, as you can imagine.

Once the order is created and packaged, we process the shipping info, and it arrives on your door in a matter of days! It might interest our readers to know that canvases we stretch for our sister company, Art Warehouses, go through the exact same process as our custom stretched blank canvases, with the added step of the cut canvas being printed on with our amazingly high-tech and beautifully precise giclee printing machines. These machines print line by line in wonderfully high-resolution special ink, creating unbelievable reproductions of paintings that are identical to the original painting.

Our process might sound precise and complicated, but our team of experts has streamlined the whole thing to be so efficient that it takes only days to complete. That’s why we’re able to produce and ship stunning, unsurpassably excellent canvases in almost no time for less than you’d typically spend on the materials to stretch your own canvas.

We’ve made it our mission to bring you the very best canvases anywhere, and save you both time and money doing so. We think we’ve succeeded, but put us to the test! When you’re ready to get the best canvases around, our warehouse, with all its sensory delights and years of expert knowledge pooled in one place, will be ready to go into action and show you what levels of excellence canvas can achieve.

As we’ve discussed here, canvas is the most popular and, in our estimation, the absolute best painting surface because it is well-suited to the demands of painting media – most notably holding and displaying paint. Because of its perfect nature for painting, a huge amount of techniques have been developed over the years for applying that paint to the canvas. While it would be impossible to list all of the techniques in the world, here are a few very interesting styles of painting that we find give spectacular results when combined with a high-quality canvas.

One technique that’s interesting to note is not exactly a painting technique, but a preparatory one. Despite it’s greatness, when canvas was first coming into widespread use, many Renaissance painters used extreme measures to mask the natural characteristics of canvas, mimicking the appearance of flat, smooth-textured (and more expensive!) surfaces, such as wood panels. As canvas use gained prominence, it became more and more acceptable and common to allow the characteristics of canvas and paint to show through, influencing the development of techniques and artwork.

Whereas some painters strived for flatness and near-photographic realism, others began to relish the textures created by thick layers of paint. Impasto uses large rough brushtrokes, full of ridges and globs, to create a textured surface. This technique plays with the way light falls on a painting, creating varying shadows depending on how you view it. Impasto is also an extremely expressive technique in that it shows the actions and intensity of the painter, and can be clearly seen in the works of artists such as Vincent Van Gogh. Another technique employing a rough style, though with much less paint than impasto, is dry brush — a technique in which all the water or oil is squeezed out of the brush before working on the canvas, creating uneven and scratchy brushstrokes.

For those that do prefer a smoother texture to their painting, wet-on-wet may be the technique for you. Also called alla prima (meaning first attempt), it involves, as the name suggests, applying wet paint on top of wet paint. The advantage of this is speed. Waiting on paint, especially oil paint, to dry can take days, weeks or longer depending on conditions, but it’s often necessary in order to prevent the layers of paint blending together — a potential disaster when working with small details. Alla prima painting exploits this blending, and a range of painters have harnessed the fluid qualities of the technique in their respective style — though it is perhaps best championed by the Impressionists, such as Claude Monet, who used the quick method to capture their immediate perceptions of a moment onto canvas.

Drip painting, loosely defined, involves a gap between the brush and the canvas when applying paint. It can be as simple as letting paint drop from above onto a waiting canvas, dancing around like Jackson Pollack, slinging paint onto an upright canvas and an array of other imaginative means (a certain scene from “The Big Lebowski” comes to mind). By creating a distance between artist and canvas, the technique embodies a sense of liberty from traditional painting styles and subjects — with less control, your painting can become more abstract and expressive.

While these days it may seem curious to see spray paint hanging on a wall rather than on the wall of a gas station or a boxcar, canvas is just as suited as brick for displaying the art form. Though it seems like a quintessentially modern style, the first airbrush was designed in the late 1800s, and spray paint cans were quickly put into production in the mid 1900s after the development of the aerosol can. Spray paint and airbrushes typically use compressed air to release a fine mist of paint, smoothly and evenly covering surfaces. Since the paint is applied in single-color layers, careful planning and a vision of the completed work is usually required with complicated designs, and the use of stencils and other tools allows for more precision and other effects.

If paint seems too boring or traditional a medium to apply to your professionally crafted canvas, look even further through history to the technique of encaustic. Encaustic is also called hot wax painting, and uses a mixture of colored pigments and heated beeswax in lieu of typical painting materials. As long as the mixture stays hot, it can be painted as well as sculpted onto your canvas, allowing for some truly unique creations. Because the mixture dries solid, you can also use it as a type of painterly glue in order to collage all sorts of materials into your work.

As you can see, there are a wide variety of techniques available to the painter that chooses canvas. These are only a few, and there are hundreds more just waiting out there for you to try on your own canvases. Whichever techniques you choose to work with, our custom stretched canvases are the ideal surfaces for both your masterpieces and experiments. We’d love to be a part of your creation process, and we know you’ll love our work just as we know we’ll love yours.

Those that have paid a visit to our site may have noticed a few of our videos displaying our process and our shop (And if you haven’t been, we encourage you to do so! We’re pretty proud of it.). If you have, you might have seen some shots of the tools and machines we use to stretch our canvases and wondered, what exactly are those? Well, this is your chance to find out a little bit of info on the various tools professional canvas stretchers have in their arsenal.

Though there are countless styles, variations and unique kinds of canvas stretching tools, professional stretchers essentially need tools to do only four things: build the frame, cut the canvas, stretch it (of course!) and attach the canvas to the frame.

Building the Frame

To build the frame, we first need stretcher bars. These are basically just pieces of wood that have diagonally cut corners, which fit together. Most modern stretchers have neat little tongue-and-groove style corners that slide perfectly into each other, though some are cut flat and must be attached together with staples or other materials (usually made of metal). Some stretchers buy their bars pre-cut, but Canvas Lot actually cuts our bars on the property, meaning we also have to have special saws to create the precise cuts in the wood.

Though canvas frames can and often are attached by hand, professional operations such as Canvas Lot use machines called “underpinners” to build their frames. Underpinners use clamps to hold stretcher bars in the perfect place and then quickly attach them together in a very precise manner. The operator of an underpinner can switch out the corner that is being attached very fast, making it a breeze to build many frames in a short amount of time.

A Perfectly Cut Canvas

The tool that is used next is the canvas cutter. Most people at home use scissors or other common cutting implements to do this, but this method is usually inaccurate, takes a while and can easily ruin a piece of canvas. Instead of these, some canvas stretchers use very precise manual cutting tools, such as cutting guide rails, while others use even more precise and much faster laser canvas cutting machines. Whatever the tool used, the cuts must be as precise as possible, or the canvas will stretch poorly (or not at all).

The Fun Part- Stretching the Canvas

Once the frame is built and the canvas cut, it’s ready to be stretched. For this, we need the rest of the tools, including stretching pliers and tools and materials to attach the canvas to the wood.

The pliers are specially built with wide, semi-flat jaws that grip the canvas tight enough to pull it, but carefully enough that they don’t leave dents, tears or other damage on the canvas. These usually have special grips in the jaws to accomplish that, sometimes using a ridged pattern in the metal and sometimes using a rubberized gripping surface.

When the pliers have pulled a piece of the canvas to the correct tightness on the frame, they are held there while the two are secured together. This is either done the old-fashioned way, with a hammer and special tacks, or the modern way, with a staple gun. Staple guns are much quicker and more efficient, needing only one hand, and come in either manual, electric or pneumatic versions. Canvas Lot uses pneumatic staple guns, which are very quick, accurate and much easier to use than a manual gun.

Once all these tools have been utilized, all that’s left to do is inspect the canvas for perfection, and then wrap it up to be shipped! As you can see, each of the tools that it takes to stretch a canvas is very specialized and must be incredibly accurate. While it’s certainly possible to try and buy them yourself and stretch canvas at home, these tools (especially the machines) are very expensive and take years of training and learning to use well.

If you’re thinking about stretching on your own, save yourself some time and money and check out our amazing prices and excellent work. In the end, we guarantee you’ll spend a great deal less letting us do the dirty work, and you’ll have the added benefit of our expensive and precise machines making certain that your canvas is the best it could possibly be. Try us out; we know you’ll love the canvas we’ll make you!

It’s often said that children “say” the darnedest things, but what about those certain individuals that use canvas and oil based materials to make beautiful Fine Art?  Are they overlooked or overshadowed by the adult art world?

In the case of child prodigy Akiane  Kramarick the latter is far from the truth.   Kramarick is a young American poet and artist.  She has been heralded throughout the world as a prodigy for her realistic paintings of people, landscape, and otherworldly places.  This young lady has an amazing talent that has been called a “gift from God” and even “divine.”  She has even claimed that she is not necessarily influenced by a particular thing here on Earth, but receives visions from God.  This was a surprise to her parents that held no particular religious belief but after Kramarick’s beautiful paintings began to move them, both parents converted from atheism to a Christian belief system.

Akaine Kramarick proclaims that her works of art are by all means divination-based but her paintings have peaked the interests of people from all walks of life including such bright stars as singer Josh Groban and The Late Late Show host Craig Ferguson.

At the age of ten, Kramarick was a guest on The Oprah Winfrey Show where she was applauded by Winfrey for her remarkable talent.  Two years after her television debut, Kramarick was featured on CNN.  Her work can be seen on the website dedicated to her work and life: Akaine.

I think that it is absolutely amazing what this young child has been able to do with blank canvas and whole lot of imagination!  Without a doubt, Kramarick is a unique child that has the ability to turn her ideas and out-of-this-world insight into brilliant pieces for all people to admire.

I have often wondered what would happen if the world were introduced to a handful of young people that could turn the art world on its head with their exceptionally creative use of materials.  Through her example, I have gathered that the world will embrace such a rarity in nature, however big or small.

What I find most impressive about this amazingly talent young person is her ability to turn a blank pre-stretched canvas into a masterpiece!  Sure, “masterpiece” is often thrown around haphazardly in the art world but this is not a light use of the word.  Akaine Kramarick is truly a small wonder!

Other than to a few brilliant iconoclasts, such as Jackson Pollock, an unprimed canvas really isn’t of much use to anyone. Your paint won’t stick right, the rough texture of the weave gives an awkward and uncomfortable brushing experience, and the whole thing is likely to just fall apart at some point in the future. Because of these issues and more, experienced canvas producers such as Canvas Lot provide you with pre-primed canvas that makes creating your masterwork a breeze.

We’ve told you what primer is in a previous post, but how exactly is it used? What magic process is involved in priming? Priming techniques are no mystery, but it is an incredibly picky and sometimes difficult process that most artists prefer to leave to the experts. To give you a little information on how this important, if delicate, process works, here’s an overview of the two main priming techniques.

Old School Priming -or- Priming for Oil

Priming a canvas to be ready for oil paints is a seriously old process, dating back to the 1400’s when canvas began to take over as the dominant painting surface. Though there are many ways to do it, we’re going to tell you how Fredrix, the makers of the canvas material for Canvas Lot, still do their oil priming, which is by hand.

To begin, a large piece of raw woven canvas is carefully stretched over a special frame that has little spikes at the edge, to which the canvas is attached. This is a very specific part of the process, and experienced primers know exactly how much to stretch each part so that it’s neither too slack or too tight. This might seem like a less important part of the whole thing, but it’s not, as any mistakes will ruin the whole canvas later in the process.

After it’s stretched, the canvas is inspected and any aberrations in the weave are fixed with special tools. There are usually a few, and it takes a master to fix these by hand.

Next, the rough canvas is sanded down with pumice stone, to make it a smoother surface. This leaves a fine dust of pumice and canvas bits on the surface, but they can’t simply be wiped off, or it will damage the canvas. Instead, the dust is bounced off the canvas by the priming team by slapping it lightly with special tools.

Once this is complete, the primers grind up the animal glue in a meat grinder. The ground glue is then laid on the canvas and spread in a very precise manner with long “knives,” tools that look like ultra-huge painter’s palette knives. This has to be done in a very specific way, or the glue will dry incorrectly.

After this, the primers make sure the glue is equally spread, and then they let it dry. When it’s dry, which takes many hours, they inspect it again and then begin to mix the gesso (or primer). They then apply the gesso with the same knives that were used to spread the glue, and again, it must be very specific.

The gesso is then left to dry, and another layer is applied on top of it. This process is repeated until the desired level of smoothness is achieved, and sometimes the layers are sanded before another is laid down. The final layer is never sanded, however, and after a final inspection, the canvas is ready to go.

Quick, Modern Priming

To apply a modern primer, the process is almost exactly the same as the old method, just minus a few steps. These new primers come premixed and can be applied directly to a canvas with a brush, alleviating the need for glue, knives or other special tools. Modern primers are usually created to work well with both oil and acrylic paint, though the old school method is always better for oil, as the animal glue bonds best with oil paint. Sanding can be done between layers of modern primer, and again, the last layer is always un-sanded. Modern primers are essentially made to make priming a quicker, easier and more accessible process for the artist, but it still takes years to master the process, even with recent advancements. Without knowing exactly what you’re doing, it’s very easy to ruin an expensive canvas in a variety of ways, including priming it in-equally, leaving bumps and putting too much or too little primer on the surface. Additionally, much canvas priming in the modern way is done with exact machines, which produce an unbeatable and perfect level of priming that is incredibly hard to match by hand.

And there you have it: the old and venerated process of priming a canvas to be painted. While learning to prime a canvas can be a fun and interesting journey, for most artists, it’s simply too much trouble, time and cost to be worth the experience. When you’re ready to paint, you’re ready, and you want a canvas that’s already perfectly set up, waiting for your creation to take life. Take our word for it, and unless you’re willing to put in countless hours and a large amount of money into becoming a master primer, let us take the burden off your shoulders. So if you’re considering priming your own canvas to save money, consider this: We’ll provide you with gorgeous, perfectly primed canvases, and we’ll do it at a fraction of the cost that it would cost you to prime your own. And that’s quality that just can’t be bested!

When it comes to Fine Art, American painter Jean-Michel Basquiat is one of my favorites.  During his lifetime, Basquiat was a force to be reckoned with because of his inhibitions with painting and collage art, his daring use of blank canvas , and his bold retelling of history.  Through storytelling, Basquiat was able to mirror his own life and create social commentary through his artwork.

Have Canvas, Will Paint

The blank canvas was only the starting point for Basquiat – he saw an opportunity to fully express his inner life and monologue.  His early work was in the form of graffiti art, an art form that was generated in Brooklyn, New York in the late 1960s and early 70s.  Not known by his birth name, SAMO was the pseudonym Basquiat chose to use during his early career, most likely for identity protection (since graffiti is considered vandalism) and to remain authentic among his peer group.

Not only was he one of the most creative artists of the 1980s, he was revered by Andy Warhol – the world famous pop cultural artist and designer for his artwork and his remarkable tenacity.  It has been well documented that Basquiat was so passionate about his canvas art that he walked right up to Warhol in a crowded restaurant, introduced himself, and gave him a Basquiat original.  How remarkable!

Canvas and the Artist

It is obvious to many admirers that Basquiat was a master of blank canvas and had a very special relationship with it.  Like many genius-level craftspeople, this public relationship ended in legacy.  This particular legacy shows how truly unique the artist relationship with canvas is, and how canvas can turn a regular human being into a deity of the modern ages!

During my study of Basquiat, I realized that the blank canvas is more than just large pieces of segmented textile waiting to be covered by paints or glue or various materials.  The canvas is an incredible holding space for amazing ideas!  This has rocket launched my love of art in so many ways and I am incredibly excited to start experimenting with new painting techniques and collage crafting on my blank canvases from Canvas Lot!

Being a discerning consumer and a professional artist in Austin, TX I am very particular about where I purchase my canvas because it is acting as the foundation for my most treasured possession: my ideas!

As I mentioned before, I am highly motivated by the artwork of Basquiat and I often look forward to delving deeply into my own inner workings to be as bold and as brave as he was while gazing at his blank canvases.  It feels wonderful to be inspired by a master of canvas!

For our return to the most famous paintings ever laid down on canvas, we step back only a relatively short amount of time, to the 20th Century. The 1900’s were a wild and exciting time in the world of art, with dozens upon dozens of new techniques, styles and ideas attempted, some more successfully than others. Here are eight of the most famous works ever done on canvas from the 1900’s, a century of great art if ever there was one.

1900-1950

Seven years after the turn of the century, Austrian Symbolist Gustav Klimt used gold leaf and a gorgeous golden, red and green color palette to create the massively popular painting known as The Kiss. This massively reprinted painting measures nearly two meters by two meters and depicts two lovers engaged in a kiss upon a bed of grass and flowers.

For the surrealist fans out there, The Persistence of Memory by Dalí is often considered the holy grail of that school of work. Dalí’s highly repeated melting clock image was first introduced in this 1931 painting, which is actually rather small at 24 x 33 centimeters and is currently on display in The MOMA in New York City.

Painted in the very next year, we have Picasso’s highly regarded Le Rêve, a controversial work depicting a woman in an erotic pose distorted as many of Picasso’s works were. The work was famously sold for $48.4 million in 1997 when the highly regarded Ganz art-collecting family needed money to settle an inheritance tax bill. This surprised the art world and made the work the 6th most expensive painting of all time at the time of its purchase.

Ending our entries from the first half of the century is another Picasso painting, perhaps more well-known than Le Rêve, a huge 3.5 x 7.75 meter painting known as Guernica. Picasso painted Guernica in 1937 after hearing of a vicious bombing of the Spanish town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. The oil on canvas work is meant to show the horrors of war and has become a very strong symbol for the anti-war movement.

1950-2000

Marking a huge departure in style and technique from anything that had come before, and any other painting on this list, we start the second half of the 20th Century with Jackson Pollock’s polarizing Number 1, 1950, more commonly known as Lavender Mist. Unlike any other painting on this list, Lavender Mist features oil paint poured directly onto unstretched, unprimed raw canvas.

As hard as it might be to pick iconic artist Andy Warhol’s most famous work, in the end it simply has to be his depictions of pop culture figure Marilyn Monroe, the most famous of which is called Marilyn Diptych. This 1962 painting is the only one on our list painted with acrylic silkscreen paints, which were used to create fifty portraits of Marilyn on one piece of canvas, half in color and half in black and white. The work was completed only weeks after the actress had died, and the photo it is based on is from the 1953 film Niagra.

Next we take a look at Magritte’s 1964 surrealist work called The Son of Man. This instantly recognizable oil painting of a man in a suit with a bowler hat and a green apple in front of his face is a cultural icon so prominent that it has been featured or referenced in multiple, and TV shows and music videos, including The Thomas Crown Affair, Michael Jackon’s “Scream,” The Simpsons and Jodorowsky’s Holy Mountain.

And finally, after sifting through centuries of works, we come to the one that has most recently become famous, partly due to its recent completion, partly to its controversial subject, and partly to the article written about it in 2011. This is Sexual Explosion by Jim Warren, painted in 1976 in oils. The work shows a nude woman whose body is crack and exploding while she sits in an ocean, with clouds and light around her. Though the painting is certainly famous, it should be noted that the painting has grown in fame recently due to a group known as the Art Collector’s Website, who used Google Images searches and rankings to attempt to determine the most famous paintings in the world. While the painting came in at #4 out of 10, it should be noted that only a year after the ACW article came out, that same organization actually attempted to sell the work.

It’s undeniably difficult to compile a list such as this one without leaving out hundreds of paintings that are more than worthy to be included, but it’s also undeniable that these fifteen paintings are among the most famous canvases ever touched by an artist. We hope that this list has given you a little more information about some of the works you’ve doubtless seen pretty much everywhere, and if there’s a painting not listed here that you think needs mentioning, let us know! It’s interesting to note that we’re in the early years of a new century, and art is only growing in popularity. Who knows what amazing and wondrous canvas works will be created in the 2000’s, but you can be sure, when we find out about them, we’ll be the first to let you know.

Simple Art Projects For Kids

When it comes to art projects for the grade school-aged child, the possibilities are endless!  My favorite art pieces created by the young ones reflect the innocence of a childlike perspective and the thought provoking use of materials on blank canvas.  When it comes to art projects for children I recommend three interesting uses of atypical materials but first… Grab a Canvas!  Now, let’s take a look at some very cool and simple children’s canvas art projects!

Project Idea No. 1 – Melt Those Crayons!

If you’re like many parents, you’ve had your fair share of Crayon-related incidents where walls covered in bright flamingo pink doodles and the mighty scribbling of incoherent blue letters suddenly appear out of thin air onto a favorite daily planner.  Well, why not take those pesky little Crayons out of their yellow box holding cell and attach them to blank canvas?  Of course, you will need to be with your child during this project because there is a high level of heat involved but the result of engaging your super awesome kid with this nifty melting Crayon project is destined to be a hit among your fellow parental group and your child’s playground mates.

Project Idea No. 2 – Incorporate Culture!

Art is often thought of as fun and an aide to the wildest of imaginations but for young pupils it can also be a covert world history project!  A culture that I recommend helping your young child incorporate into their new masterpieces is that of the Japanese culture.  The Japanese have centuries-old art techniques that are used in Western culture, and with very good reason – it is pleasant to receive visually and wildly popular as a communicative information source.  If you’re familiar with cherry blossoms and unique typographical characters, you have probably admired the artwork of an individual influenced by Japanese culture or who is a member of it!  I recommend this culture without reservation: I believe that we all benefit by learning from various cultures.  Pick one that you and your child can learn about and get to work on your canvas!

Project Idea No. 3 – The Self-Portrait!

Painting a self-portrait on canvas can be an eye-opening experience for your child and even for you – you have intimate view of how your beautiful child seems her or himself through their very own interpretation.  How cool!  First, have your child sketch their self-portrait before working on the blank canvas, with their face as the primary focal point.  Pick a color or a scene as the background and paint it on the canvas.  After the paint is dry, begin the painting the self-portrait!  You be thrilled by what your child comes up with and will be able to keep a lovely portrait of them for years to come.

As you can see, children’s art projects can be as diverse as the materials being used.  These projects also add a whole other level of fun and engagement with the young artist and their audience.  For more creative ideas, keep your virtual bookmark on Canvas Lot’s Blog!

Here’s a fun game to play if you ever happen to be in a room full of artists and/or art lovers. In the most nonchalant and innocent manner you can muster, ask the crowd what they think the most famous painting in the world is. Then sit back and enjoy, as you’re about to be treated to at least half an hour of debate that will more than likely escalate, possibly ending in heated exchanges and hurt feelings. Like the infamous “What is art?” and “Who is the best artist?” questions, “What is the most famous painting?” is a question that art aficionados of every level have an opinion on, though it probably has no right answer.

Despite the lack of any real method to determine the holder of this honor accurately, people certainly do try, and in recent years, the internet has allowed the flourishing of a huge number of “Most Famous Paintings” lists. While none of the available lists are perfect, and many are just examples of downright favoritism by anonymous contributors, what we can glean from these lists is a selection of paintings that are among the most famous ever to exist. By doing away with the ubiquitous need to rank these paintings, we can find ourselves a set of paintings that, in no particular order, are very well-known.

Of course, on this blog we’re mostly interested in those works that were created on that most excellent and beloved surface in the art world, that being canvas of course. So here’s a quick two-part look at fifteen canvases that can undoubtedly be referred to as some of the most famous in the world, focusing first on those pre-1900’s, and then those of the most recently past century.

Pre- 1800’s

As canvas is a relatively newly dominant surface in the world of art, it took a while after its invention for it to be the choice that prominent artists used for their masterpieces. Among those canvas-based pieces painted prior to the 1800’s that have become very famous are three in particular that stand out.

The first of these is Sandro Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus, an infinitely well-known piece depicting the birth of the Roman goddess Venus emerging from the sea, birthed as a fully grown woman standing in a clam and attended by angels and a woman who seeks to clothe her. This gorgeous tempera on canvas work painted in 1486 is currently held in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, and is a gorgeous representation of Early Italian Renaissance work.

Next we have the very different oil painting popularly known as The Night Watch. This 1642 piece by the master Rembrandt is actually called The Shooting Company of Frans Banning Cocq. The painting depicts Cocq, who commissioned it, and his men as they prepare to embark on a hunt. It’s particularly notable for its use of chiaroscuro (light and shadow) and for having been once cut down on all four sides as well as having been at point point attacked by a vandal with a butter knife.

Our third pre-1800’s piece is by the lighting genius Vermeer, 1667’s Girl with a Pearl Earring. This elegant oil picture of a woman wearing an earring and turning toward the viewer is actually more than likely not supposed to be a portrait, but instead what is known as a “tronie,” which is best defined as a picture of an anonymous head that is more about what’s happening than depicting a real person.

The 1800’s

Once the 1800s hit, canvas was king. Though of course other surfaces were still in use, many of the masterpieces of this era were done on canvas.

French Impressionist and world-renowned painter of scenes Pierre-August Renoir is first on our list with his incredible Luncheon of the Boating Party done with oil paints around 1880-1881. An excellent example of the Impressionist style, this work depicting a group of casual French revelers is famed for its bright colors and was controversially restored in 1954.

The next three paintings rounding out our pre-1900’s list are all by the same artist, possibly the most well-known artist of all time: Vincent Van Gogh. Three of Gogh’s amazing and most beloved works are Starry Night Over the Rhone, The Starry Night (which are often mistaken for each other) and Irises. The three were painted from 1888 to 1889 and are highly colorful, very stylized pieces. The two night scenes, in particular, are known for their depiction of stars and lights, and Starry Night is commonly listed in the top three most famous paintings ever.

It may seem odd that only seven of our fifteen famous canvases are from other centuries besides the 20^th, but consider two things: First, as we’ve mentioned, canvas became more dominant as a surface the farther along history moved. Second, art and artists grew to be more and more visible and easy to view as technology advanced, leading to more reproductions of the art and a wider media-net for each piece to be caught in. Because of these things, as well as perhaps simply that modern people often prefer art from their own time, most of our list falls within the 1900’s, and we have some pretty interesting facts to back that choice up with. As always, stay tuned to this spot, as next up we’ll show you eight more incredible works of canvas art you’re sure to recognize.