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WARNING!
Artists' materials are very dangerous and can cause injury or death! Use in a well-ventilated area,
read all warning labels, and keep out of reach of children! Use at your own risk!
I'm going to show you how to stain a canvas.
This is a stain color that I like
that's somewhere between black and white.
I don't like to paint on a white canvas,
and I wouldn't want to paint on a black canvas.
This is a good neutral color.
It's not as blue as a lot of greys.
It's maybe shifted more toward orange,
but it's a color that I like
that I get from mixing burnt umber.
I use Winsor & Newton Burnt Umber,
but you can use almost any good quality burnt umber.
Then, I like this Holbein Quick Drying White,
but you can use any foundation white.
I just like the way it dries,
and I like the tooth that it has
once I've finished staining.
The tooth is the...
Whether it's glossy, or whether it's matte,
it has a certain "matte-ness" that grabs the paint
that I like a lot, so I really
like the Quick Drying White by Holbein.
So, let me take this little bowl here,
and I'm going to mix some up,
then I'm going to stain this canvas
when I'm finished.
It's just Claessens #13,
which is a canvas I like,
but you can stain any kind of canvas with this stain.
All I'm going to use to thin my paint with
is just some inexpensive mineral spirits.
I'm going to take some Quick Drying White first —
and I usually use a little extra
so I don't have to mix it up twice —
and then some burnt umber.
And it's about 1/3 as much burnt umber —
I probably put too much —
but about 1/3 burnt umber
and 2/3 of the white.
Mix those two together.
And the color...
I'm not so much interested in the color.
Depending on what kind of burnt umber you use,
some are more red, some are more blue,
but to me, it's not really very critical.
I could use any burnt umber to mix my stain with.
What I'm really interested in
is getting the darkness and the lightness right.
In other words, I don't want it to be
too dark or too light.
I want to show you how to test this.
This is too dark.
I'm just putting these on a piece of regular cardboard
so that you can judge for yourself
by just getting some regular cardboard and using that.
That's too dark, so I'm going to lighten it up some.
I like my stain to be dark enough
that I get full coverage with my blacks
with one stroke of paint.
And yet, not so dark
that when I paint with a really light color,
I don't want the dark stain showing through my light colors.
This color here is about perfect,
because I can get full coverage with white paint,
and I can get full coverage with black paint.
Let me take a little bit of this
and let's see where we are.
Still too dark.
And, the camera, if anything,
will make this look darker
to you, on a video, than it really is.
But that's still too dark,
so we're going to go even lighter.
OK, so that's getting pretty good.
That's close.
So, if you look at that,
it's one good step darker than this cardboard,
which is just regular box cardboard.
Now I'm going to take that
and I'm going to add some mineral spirits to it
to thin it down.
So, when you start to add the mineral spirits
at the very beginning,
we're just going to put a very small splash.
Just a very little bit.
And then, mix that in first
until it's nice and smooth, and then add more.
And then we just keep on adding it.
This room has got a ton of ventilation.
Normally, I would do this outside,
but I'm in this open garage,
and I've got it set up where the air just blows through here.
Do this outside
or somewhere with really, really good ventilation.
It's a lot more smelly than painting
with your regular oil paint.
This is mixed now to the consistency that I want.
You can see how runny that is.
I mean, it's just real runny.
That's the way I like it.
You don't want it watery thin,
but it's very runny.
Look how it drips off my brush.
So, that's that.
Let me bring the canvas up here.
This isn't really complicated.
I always make sure there's no hair or lint
or anything stuck on my canvas.
Just brush it on.
Brush it on just thick enough
so that you get good coverage.
You really don't need any more than that.
If your canvas shows through a little bit, that's fine.
You want it to be on there as thick as possible,
but not so much that it's pooling up,
or so that when you brush it,
the canvas doesn't show through too much.
You're going to see it a little bit, and that's OK,
but you shouldn't see it too much.
Even though this paint is pretty watery,
I'm getting pretty good coverage here.
Look for all the hairs.
There's always a few brush hairs that fall into the paint.
And you've got plenty of time to work it.
This isn't like varnish.
That's about it.
That's how I stain my canvases.
Give it a good 48 hours to dry
before you start penciling on it.
That's about it.
That's all there is to it.