Canvas Collage

When you hear the word ‘canvas’ in canvas collage, I bet you automatically think of fine art paintings hanging in museums.

It is true that painters have been the traditional users of canvas. But no longer! Canvas is an ideal surface on which to create a collage.

Canvas typically comes in three forms:

1) stretched canvas – canvas stretched across a wooden frame and stapled in place, either on the side or on the back (called gallery wrap)

2) canvas board – a hard board with a canvas surface

3) canvas paper – found sketch pad form with canvas textured pages

Canvas board Lily Where do I get canvas?

You can buy stretched canvas and canvas boards in standard framing sizes from many art and craft supply shops or at an online art shop. All are ready prepared with gesso to take paint and have a slightly bumpy texture.

A great place online to view the available sizes and to purchase canvases is Dick Blick

So why use canvas?

I love to create canvas collage because

* they are super durable

* prepared canvas will not buckle if you choose to add a layer of paint below or above your collage elements and can host multiple layers and even some distressing

* the edges of the stretched canvas can be painted or collaged adding a 3rd dimension to canvas collages

* both stretched canvas and canvas boards are easy to hang on the wall: the stretched canvas can be directly hung on a nail in the wall or fitted into a frame and canvas board can be hung by wire or ribbon or fitted into a Canvas board collage

frame, either way canvas collages can adorn your home pretty quickly after creation.

Working with canvas

Approach the act of collaging on canvas the same as you would collaging on paper. A major difference you will find is the surface texture. You may want to leave some of that texture showing, in that case it is best to put a layer of paint down first as gessoed canvas is an uninteresting white color. The composition and gluing to the canvas is similar to collaging on other surfaces.

Printing to canvas

If you create a digital collage Canvas printed

you can get it printed directly onto canvas. This is a good way to cut down on the added steps of getting a collage or photo collage professionally printed and then framed.

You create your collage, scan it to jpeg form, or create a digital collage in your photo software and upload it to the printer’s website. They will typically ask for the dpi to be set at 300 rather than the typical 72dpi, so you need to be familiar with your software’s method of changing the image size and dpi. Once you upload your file you will receive a confirmation that the art image has been received and they do all the rest. In general you shouldn’t wait any more than a week or two for your art to be mailed to you, ready to be hung.

A site I have used to print my digital canvas is epingo.com. epingo.com. But if you Google ‘custom canvas printing’ you will find a listing for many other stores.

Tip - It is always a delight to see your art work professionally printed, so I recommend that every artist invest in some form of decent printing, it will go a long way to boost your confidence!

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