Canvas making workshop

We were given 4 stretcher bars for our canvas, in pairs of two as they were different lengths to make up a rectangle for the frame of our canvases, and we slotted them together and used a hammer to make sure they fit together nice and snug, making sure there were no little gaps between the stretchers for the frame

We then had the chance to lay down our frames on a sheet of canvas fabric and got to measure out how much fabric we would need to cover the frame to then fix onto it. We had to make sure we had enough fabric to be able to pull and stretch the fabric tight across the frame to make it a stable canvas to then work on later, however issues arose with stapling the fabric to the frame, as stapling the corners were difficult to get the hang of to make sure that we didn't have messy corners in the end, but after a few tries along with some support from peers I was able to get the hang of it eventually and do it myself. 

we had to hammer in wedges between the stretcher bars, to help stretch the frame a little further to pull the fabric tighter so we had a nice firm base to paint on. Next, we had to prime our canvas so we could pain on it later on, which we did a couple of coats of before we were finished. 

Once my canvas had dried, I decided to sketch out a drawing inspired by the Dreaming Tree from the book BFG, as it backs up my enchanted theme I'm going for, along with the things I have learnt about colour theory through the previous workshops that I have also posted about. I also used some spare gold leaf that I had kept from a few of my personal pieces and decided to incorporate it to add to the fantasy/ enchanted theme too. 

Overall, the canvas making was interesting and surprisingly a lot easier than I thought it would have been, and I would like to do it again in the future too because of this and perhaps making different sized frames, as well as experimenting with different shaped frames too in correlation with what I want to do with it, having interesting shapes to fit with a certain media used applied to it. Getting to apply my new knowledge about colour theory I also did a blend of different blues, greens, yellows and purples to add different textures to the sky in the background, as well as trying to give of the effect of glowing orbs for the 'dreams' floating around the tree, however I don't typically like to use acrylic paints (I prefer watercolour) so I found some difficulties with blending and applying the pain itself, a couple of times I found that I didn't have enough paint to cover a whole section in one colour, and had issues with shading and lighting but as I got used to painting it did gradually get easier. If I was to paint again, I think I would use watercolour as it's what I am used to painting with and I like the media.