Painting Using 'Used' Canvases

Step one: Purchase a reduced stretched canvas.

In my early artist days I loved to paint. Once computers came into their own and I learned how to create electronic art, I veered away from actually putting brush to canvas. I had a family by then and the price of oils or acrylics (my choice), brushes and the stretched canvas itself became a luxury I couldn't afford.


Even today, with the kids all grown, I still balk at the price of some of the items necessary to create a painting. That is until I thought of a clever idea!


I like to shop in HomeGoods (seriously, who doesn't?) and one day, browsing the clearance racks, I found a painting on stretched canvas that was reduced. I'm not really sure why ( I suppose it just didn't sell)  but I thought that if I painted over the original painting with 'kill' paint, I would have an inexpensive blank canvas to do my own painting. The benefit of doing this is to get a nice sized canvas that would probably cost twice as much in an art supply store. In this case the canvas was 2 ft. x 4 ft., a size that fit a spot in my kitchen perfectly.

Step two: Paint canvas with kill paint 

and sketch the new illustration

Step three: Have an unveling 

for your new masterpiece!

My subject was going to be a fun portrait of our cat Buster who died earlier this year. The kitchen was his haunt and we wanted to create a memory in the room he loved the best. After the canvas was painted white, I sketched the illustration and painted it using acrylics and colors that compliment the kitchen decor. 

Buster is back and I saved a lot of money!