Most of the textured art you see online is created on regular preprimed canvases.
But if you want a more natural-looking background where the texture of the fabric remains visible, you might want to try using an unprimed canvas.
In this post, I'll show you what materials you need, how to prime a raw canvas without ruining the organic look and how to create a textured art painting from start to finish.
If you are new to textured art, I suggest you start by first going through my guides How to Get Started With Textured Art and Textured Art Material Guide for Beginners.
Nine out of ten times I also work on a regular preprimed stretched canvas, and it's what I always suggest for beginners to start with.
Materials
If you've done any textured art before, you most likely have almost all the required materials. For the background, you'll simply need:
- raw stretched canvas
- clear gesso
- paintbrush
For the canvas, I prefer linen. It's higher quality and has a rougher look than cotton. Raw canvases tend to be fairly rare these days, so your best bet at finding one is online.
To prime it for painting, we'll need gesso. Don't use regular white gesso because that will just hide the surface, use clear gesso that dries transparent.
Raw vs Primed Canvas
Whenever I use a raw canvas, it is purely for visual reasons. After we prime the surface with gesso, it behaves like a preprimed canvas.
The only real difference is that with a raw canvas, you are doing the priming yourself instead of it being done at the factory.
The main benefit is that the natural texture of the fabric remains visible instead of being covered by white gesso.
How to Prime a Raw Canvas For Painting
Here is a short video about how to prepare the raw canvas for textured art. Use thin layers of clear gesso to prime the surface for painting.
The clear gesso dries transparent, leaving the organic look of the raw canvas completely visible
Example: How to Create "Raw Vortex"
Next, we are going to create the Vortex textured art painting on a raw linen canvas. The materials I used for this are:
- a raw linen canvas, 55x46 cm
- clear gesso
- texture paste
- a palette knife
- silica sand (optional, to make the paste coarse)
- masking tape
- Prussian Blue, Sap Green & Raw Umber acrylic paints
- a paintbrush
In this design, I use the partial mixing technique for applying the coloured textures. The technique is described in more detail in the "How to Colour Textured Art: 3 Easy Techniques" -guide.
Here's a quick video showing you the process of creating the Vortex. I had already primed the canvas before, as shown in the video above.
Tips on creating the Vortex:
- Use clear gesso to prime the background first
- Add more depth to the design with paint before the textures. Don't paint too much or you'll hide the raw background
- Don't overwork the partially coloured texture paste, otherwise it turns into one uniform colour
Finished Result
PS. If you are new to textured art, I've put together a series of guides and tutorials that will help you get started. You can find them from here.
PSS. I also send out short emails with textured art tips, tutorials and beginner advice when I have something useful to share. You can leave your email below.