Material Fact: Charcoal Sticks on Canvas/Canvas Fabric Material

Fact:

If you plan to do a mixed media project with canvas material and charcoal sticks, then please read this first before continuing.

It's an awsome idea that you would consider doing a mixed media art project with canvas/canvas material and charcoal sticks, BUT ALWAYS TEST THEM OUT FIRST!!!! When I was getting ready to do my 7 deadly sins series on canvas, I knew what I wanted to use; however, without thinking, I didn't test out the actual materials that was using before starting.

So, my mom was concerned about the charcoal material smeering really bad when I would go into doing my wash. She suggested to do some research and thank the Lord that I did. When I did, mom suggested a some sort of "shelack", what she calls it, to see if the charcoal would smeer. Now, thanks to the previous class I had over at my school, the teacher there was teaching us on how to make our canvases from scratch, which leads to the canvas fabric materal.

Tip:
Keep in mind that when I say canvas fabric material, that material is specifically used for creating art canvases in terms of actual paintings and other art related projects. This fabric material is NOT for sewing whatsoever! The material is too rigid and rough to the touch and may screw up the sewing machine if you try it. So please, use the canvas fabric material for creating canvases.

Anyway, once I researched on how to handle this situation, it talked about using a matte medium type of media. So basically, I had this from my previous classes in school.


Liqutix Matte Medium:

Go to "Material Facts: Liquitex Matte Medium" blog for more detailed information about the material. Use this material for your canvas project for good protection of your project. I had a little bit of canvas fabric material left from my last class, before I left school, and I tested this theroy out myself.

I drew one eye on a piece of square of the material and I had drew another eye on a second piece of square of that same material. Here is my conclusion from this experiement is this:

• With the first eye, if you brush over the product too swiftly, fast, and press hard, the charcoal WILL smeer greatly, which will leave you with a mess.

• With the second eye, if you brush over the product very slowly at a steady pace and don't press hard at all, the charcoal WILL NOT smeer as much. Again, it will still smeer, but you will less likely have a mess to try and fix.

After I did these tests, I did one more experiment on both. Once both sets of eyes were dried from the matte medium, I tried painting over them with a white paint. They both proved to be successful regardless of the different results each of them gave from the previous experiment.

Once the matte medium dries, it will successfully not smeer when you rub your hands across the art project and you will not have any more worries about the charcoal smeering your project when you do a wash or paint.

Tip:

It's always best to smudge your charcoal lines before you use the Liquitex Matte Medium. This will help you reduce the affects of smeering greatly if you do this. Again, you may have still a little smeering, but if you heed the tips above, you should have little to no problems.

Okay, that's it for now. See ya later and have a great day^_^