is I've come just a couple inches from the corner.
When you've done that, you'll have stretched everything except for
those zones around the corners.
So, again, it's really like a taut drum everywhere except for those corners,
which get a little weak, a little wimpy.
So the trickiest part now is how to do the corners.
Now some people get really lazy and they just [SOUND] and staple that back.
And well that's a pretty crappy looking corner if you ask me.
Professional artists, people who sell paintings do this sometimes.
However, there's nothing wrong with it structurally,
it's not like it's going to fall off or anything like that most likely.
If you're going to make very spare paintings that are about paints,
abstract paintings, this kind of thing is really going to catch your eye.
Now, if you're painting in kind of a cartoony, loud, kind of way,
with crazy colors, and spray paints, and all this, well maybe no one's ever
going to notice that because there's three million other things to look at first.
I'm going to show you the way that I think is the cleanest way to do it,
in my preference, the nicest way to do it.
It's not the only way to do it.
That's one way that I think is lame, personally.
Another way to do it is to actually fold the corner over onto the back so
that you see this fold on the side.
Well, in my mind, that's a little bit better, but
that's still a little bit sloppy because you see that canvas edge.
The way that I'm going to show you actually hides that.
With a little origami kind of magic trick so that,
I'll show you how to do it in a sec, that fold is still there, but it's underneath.
So now when you look at that edge it looks nice and clean.
It's not going to distract you.
When you look at it from the front, there's not a whole lot of extra
activity going on in that corner to distract your eye.
So how do you go about doing that?
And I'll repeat this a couple times because I know it's not second nature.
You first have to decide which edge you want that double thickness,
or in fact triple thickness of canvas to go.
In other words, we're making a fold.
And there's all this extra canvas here because it's folded under.
Where do I want that to go?
Well, in this case I want it to go, right on this side,
right where my finger is here.
So, the key to remembering this is rather,
that the bottom of that fold needs to go down first,
since I know I'm going to fold over the top of it.
So the bottom is actually coming from the other edge, with my thumb.
I'm just going to stick the canvas down right there with my thumb.
And this is the bottom edge of that fold and that's going to be hidden,
it's going to be folded over by,
this, like so.
And if you're like me, you'll probably have to learn this by doing it.
This is one of those things that you can learn with your hands better than your
brain or your eyes for that matter.
So again, I want that double thickness to be on this edge right here.
So with my thumb I'm taking the opposite edge and
pushing it down around that corner onto the edge where I want it.
And then I'm going to grab the canvas here, and fold over the top of it.
Now if I do it right, it's going to come parallel to that edge again and
I can fix it, and I pulled on it by the way.
I can fix it there.
Then you'll have one more staple to pull behind it [SOUND].
And then one more staple to pull here [SOUND].
And then that corner's pretty much done.
Now this is a little bit loose so I'm going to add another staple.
The only critical thing to do, or not to do really,
is that you don't want to staple across that mitered join.
The reason being is that later on, we're going to use these keys,
these little guys.
That are going to go in there and they if we need
it are going to open up that miter join to supply more tension to the canvas.
However, if I staple that corner shut well it's not going anywhere right?
So, I just want to make sure that I'm, my rule of thumb is I always
staple parallel to that joint so there's no chance that I'm going to cross it.
So go ahead and always give it a pull [SOUND].
And I'm just going to staple there, parallel to that joint, and
I'll just keep this one done [SOUND].
Voila, done.
Okay, next corner, where is this double thickness going to go?
I suggest keeping them on the same side.
In other words here and here, and then [SOUND] here and here.
Why?
Well you'll see that from the face, there is that,
well triple thickness of canvas there.
If I were to make that next corner here,
it'd look a little funny like a pinwheel, right?
It look a lot funny if I tried to frame this painting,
because an edge frame would be a little bit off the canvas here, and
then it would want to be on the canvas there.
Meaning that the frame would be a little diagonal.
And again, you might not think that's a big deal, but especially in a small
painting, especially on a kind of minimal quiet painting that you might make.
Somewhat like the artists we're covering in this class,
that kind of thing might really draw your eye.
But if you start with these materials
you understand how the corners work, you understand how the canvas works.
And you really relate to this thing as an object rather than as some
product you bought from the store to paint on.
So I'm just going to go ahead and finish this stretching here.
If this is second nature to you, go ahead and turn the video off now.
If it's not and you want to see that corner a couple more times,
three more times, keep watching.
So that second corner is going to go on the opposite edge here.
And again, I'm going to put the bottom of that canvas down first, and
then fold over the top, like so.
[SOUND] Then neatening up the tension.
[SOUND] And then finally just making sure
not [SOUND] to staple over that miter join there, fine.
So this one, you do the same thing [SOUND].
So there's that fold.
Again, it's this side I wanted to go in, so
I choose canvas on the other side, press my thumb down
around that corner, and then fold over the top of it.
And then finally, that last one again I want to put on the same edge as that fold.
So I'm putting the bottom down and then going right over top of it.
[SOUND]
So if you've done a decent job stretching your canvas at this point,
it should be quite taut everywhere all around the painting.
And you should notice that if you start to press down here,
you're not going to be resting right on that wood.
Rather there is a gap there of, I don't know, a quarter of an inch or
something like that.
Perhaps a little bit more where your paint brush is not going to be
knocking against the wood on the back side of the canvas.
So there you have it.
Go ahead and stretch up your first canvas and see how it goes.
By the way we haven't done any preparatory work on this canvas.
So this is just that cotton duck that I suggest starting with,
simply because it's cheaper than linen.
By the way, if you wanted to paint on a solid support, you
could do something very, very similar on a piece of Masonite or something like that.
Now we don't really need to worry about the canvas moving because,
well there's nowhere for it to go.
Painters such as Yves Klein like to do this kind of thing,
because they paint it with a roller.
And if you're working on a canvas like this with a roller, well then you're
definitely going to press the canvas down and hit that edge of the stretcher bar.
So go ahead and do this.
The reason why more artists don't paint on these things is simply because well,
when it gets big, it's heavier, it's more expensive.
But for our purposes in this scale, they're more or less interchangeable.
So again, a stretched canvas, a square in this case, and
these corners with that nice clean fold over the edges.
