Whenever one hears a masterpiece being mentioned the picture that invariably flashes before the eyes is that of an artwork mounted on a canvas. Traditionally, almost all the great painters chose canvas as the medium to express their creativity. Be it the Picasso or Maqbool Fida Hussain, all of them chose to create their masterpieces on canvas. Canvas is basically a rough plain woven fabric of linen which is heavy and not easy to work with. Heavy duty stretcher and stretcher bars Prior to painting, a canvas needs to be stretched. The tedious job of stretching the canvas in a perfect manner is done by mounting a canvas on a heavy duty stretcher. A stretcher is a rectangular frame fashioned out of heavy duty stretcher bars which can take the strain of a bulky canvas and strain it to smooth out any creases and present the artist with an even surface to work upon. Heavy duty stretcher bars are made from wood, metal or alloy. Among wood, pine is considered to be the best medium for cutting poles and then fashioning them into heavy duty stretcher bars which are then arranged and fixed to form a sturdy contraption, square or rectangular, to make a heavy duty stretcher on which the canvas can be mounted, fixed and held in place by clamps and then stretched to remove all the creases and bring out an even and smooth surface. A canvas is often gessoed or polished to smoothen the surface. A gesso is a traditional type of primer used by artists. Some heavy duty stretchers are available for sale in the market that can be used by an artist to stretch canvas without causing him much trouble for printing to canvas. They can easily smooth out any creases and provide uniform, smooth and tight canvas in about 3 minutes or so and are extremely popular with the artists who want to straightaway devote their energies on painting rather than stretching a bulky canvas. The professional quality canvas stretchers can also make gallery wraps and it is considered more artistic than the machine generated stretching.
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