How to make acrylic painting unwrinkled?

Question

I usually paint on huge canvas paper that I always just somehow wrinkle ...I'm currently in the middle of doing and under painting and one side of the the canvas is wrinkled due to bad rolling (rolling it up for easy travel). I read that steam and stuff on the back of the canvas would help fix it but wouldn't the steam go through the canvas fabric and lift the gesso, ruining the painting faster in the future? how can i smooth my canvas without ruining it or the painting??

Answer 1

Ok, here is the deal. You heard right but it's only half the story. It's like saying that to drive a car you need to put the pedal to the metal. Not wrong but dangerously incomplete.



Acrylic paint is a rather rigid material once it has dried. It will also become softer if it becomes warm again. And there is the truth. A softer paint will allow to become unwrinkled.



Put your painting on stretcher bars. Not to tight but be ready to make it tighter. If it is real canvas you can even use hot water shower directly on the back of the painting. If it has evenly warmed up increase the tension a bit. Not to much but enough to pick up some of the slack. The canvas will shrink a bit when drying and that will iron out all wrinkles.



If you can't use stretcher bars there is always the iron. Set to synthetics and iron the back. Use a flat blanket covered with clean paper as an ironing board. Check frequently (every few seconds at first) if the iron is not to hot and makes the paper stick to your painting. If the paint is fully cured this will not happen but better safe than sorry.



Good luck.

Answer 2

You refer to both 'canvas paper' and to 'canvas' - I'm assuming you mean the former; that is, canvas-textured paper.



Is there a border to the painting that you can afford to lose? If so, in principle it may not be too late to 'stretch' it, as you would for preparing watercolour paper.



The basic principle is that wetting paper expands it, and it then dries slightly smaller than the original size. As long as the wrinkles aren't too bad, they should 'shrink out'.



You need a completely rigid board larger than the paper. You wet the paper thoroughly (in this case you'd probably sponge it from the back) and lay it on the board. Then you go round the edges with gumstrip (gummed paper tape), fixing them down to the board. If in doubt, use two layers - the tension from a large sheet of paper can be considerable, and may split the gumstrip. Then you leave it to dry. Any surviving wrinkles can be made wet again from the front.



NB You do this at your own risk! I haven't seen how strong the paper is, or how bad the wrinkles are. Or whether the acrylic is well-bound. Underbinding (= over-thinning of the medium) is always a possible problem with acrylic.



In future, I'd advise stretching the paper (as above) beforehand.