Hello,
I work on transparent primed linen on aluminum stretchers bars.
A good stretcher company in Europe as well as another in the US proposed to stretch my linen reversed, i.e. with the transparent acrylic primed side to the back and the umprimed part visible. Once stretched the front is gessoed with transparent acrylic gesso. They say being gessoed both sides, there are fewer chances for the linen to destretch over time as it’s often a problem with linen. I’ve worked on it and it works great.
But someone just told me it’s a bad idea. The canvas needs to breathe on the back for the oil to dry well.
What are your thoughts on this?
I also wanted to do the same thing but with white gessoed canvas (white acrylic gesso stretched on the back and I gesso the raw front with transparent acrylic gesso once stretched). Is there a difference with doing this with canvas and white gesso instead of linen and transparent gesso?
Thank you so much for your precious help.
There maybe a fractional difference to drying speed but it should be very minimal indeed. If the paint requires this semi breathing reverse side effect to “dry well.” then the oil paint film must be so thick as to be at the limits of stability. (Say half inch or more films of either titanium white, cadmium or synthetic organics.) Plenty of oil paintings use non permeable supports with no risk at all.
Marc.
Thank you so much for your detailed answer. I will also pass along the answer. It is so appreciated!
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