Today’s free painting tip comes from an experience I had whilst I was a student at York University. Let me give you some quick background info…

York U had it’s practical programming set up in such a way that in order to see an artistic discipline through to the end of your university career you had to take two half-course prerequisites in that discipline. Drawing; painting; sculpture. All disciplines were set up this way and you were expected to take them in first and second year. By doing this, York allowed students to test out a variety of programs without putting in too much time or money. If the students showed no real aptitude or interest for the discipline, once the course was done, they could move on easily to something else without harming their degree. This was a plus for the system.

The down side of this setup was that all half-courses were taught by T.A.’s (teaching assistants), not professors. This meant that students were teaching students which in my opinion is a disaster waiting to happen. Many times my T.A.’s didn’t have a clue how to teach their courses (many were teaching disciplines of which they themselves were not studying at the time) and many times they were too busy thinking about their own MFA’s to really give our classes the attention they needed. Well…

I love to paint which is fairly obvious. The entire body of work I used in my application to York was painting. In my second year I had the expected T.A. as my painting mentor. Unfortunately everything I learned about the subject of painting that year I learned from working alongside my friends coupled with hours and hours of practice, and here’s why–my T.A. refused to teach!

I was producing a painting that required a lot of clean straight lines. I had used tape to mask my design but found that the paint kept creeping under the edges of the tape, ruining my straight lines and leaving me with hours of touch ups. I asked her if she knew a way to get nice clean lines and, without missing a beat she said “I can’t teach you that. I use that technique in my painting.”

Like she was a magician whose secrets I wanted to usurp she flat out refused to impart knowledge to me! Can you believe it? A teacher who wouldn’t teach. What a confounding idea. Sounds like something from a Douglas Adams novel.

Not satisfied with that answer I set out to find a way to acheive my goal. It’s actually a very simple trick. I have that knowledge now and I’d like to impart it to you.

So you want to make some clean lines on your painting. You lay down some tape, mask off the area to be painted and go ahead painting in your image.

After pulling off the tape you’re unpleasantly surprised to find that the paint has crept under the tape and given you a lovely frilly edge (well, not so lovely actually because it’s the exact opposite of what you’re trying to acheive).

Instead of getting this:

You got that:

Now you’ve got to go in with a fine brush and touch up all the areas where the paint bled, spending hours trying to colour match and not paint over the clean line you intended to produce in the first place. Sometimes art is a labour of love and sometimes it’s just labour.

But wait! There’s an easier way to acheive your goal of clean lines the first time and the secret to it is this–seal the edge of the tape–with clear coat.

You’ll notice the term ‘Low Viscosity Polymer’ on the example picture here. Don’t be confused by it. It’s just a fancy way of saying ‘acrylic’. All acrylics are a polymer, or in layman’s terms, a plastic. They’re acheived through a chemically reactive process and depending on whether you stop that process quickly or let it run on for awhile determines how thick an acrylic will become. The longer the process, the thicker the acrylic. Tri-Art Canada has a whole range of products which reflect the great diversity one can acheive when playing with this process.

 
Low Viscosity Polymer or ‘clear coat’ is a product you can find distributed by many paint brands. It is thinner than most acrylics on the market but still has the same binding properties as paint. That means that even though it’s thinner, it’ll stick just fine. It’s essentially thin acrylic without any colour in it and here’s how we use it.

Put down your tape in which ever configuration you’re after. For the sake of explanation I’ve done just a simple straight line. Use low tack tape such as green painters tape for this to avoid leaving adhesive residue on your work.

One of the factors that might be contributing to paint creeping under the edge of your tape is that it might not be pressed down tight to the surface of the canvas. Canvas has a surface texture with peaks and valleys. There’s no way to press the tape down to the canvas 100 percent but using something smooth, such as the back of a paintbrush to rub along the edge will help.

Now that you’ve got your design sorted out and the edge pressed down tightly, get some clear coat on your brush and run around the edge that you want to be nice and clean. I’d recommend letting the first layer dry and then doing it again to make sure you seal the tape completely. I haven’t inserted a picture here because the clear coat dries–clear. It didn’t show up well enough to be photographed, sorry!

The clear coat should take no longer to dry than conventional acrylics. When you’re confident that the tape is sealed with clear coat go ahead and paint to your hearts content!

When you’re done painting remove the tape and you’ll have this:

Instead of that:

When lifting off the tape make sure you do it on a diagonal so that the edge you want to keep clean is the edge you’re lifting up second. If you don’t, the paint you’ve put along that edge will hold onto the tape and rip it leaving you to try and pick up a tiny edge of tape along the line you’re trying to keep clean. It’s more fuss that you don’t need. Pull your tape like this:

And that’s all there is too it. Simply seal the tape and you’ll get lovely clean lines time and again. I wish I could remember the name of that T.A. I had. I’d love to e-mail this page to her and show her how easy it was to impart knowledge–when it wasn’t even asked for! I hope she doesn’t still pretend to teach.

Here’s an example where I used clear coat sealed tape to separate sections of a painting:

One final note:

When picking out a clear coat it is my recommendation that you purchase one that is glossy, NOT matte. Glossy clear coat is nice and flexible and will bend easily with the rest of your acrylics should your painting get bumped or pressed upon. Matte clear coat tends towards brittleness and may crack if you use a lot of it. I’m not sure what the chemical difference is between the two, that’s just the way it is.

For now, that is all. Goodnight.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 19th, 2009 at 11:58 am and is filed under Tips and Tricks . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.