Quick Tip: Get the Wrinkles Out of a Stretched Artist's Canvas

I discovered a quick way to get wrinkles out of an artist's canvas that has been stretched, gessoed and even had light layer of paint applied.

I'd bought a bunch of canvases at the 1 cent sale at Aaron Brothers that had been sitting around for a while. I pulled a 12" x 36" canvas out to paint today and noticed it had some wrinkles and sags in one of the corners. I hoped they'd work themselves out, but after putting on a light undercoat of paint they became even more visible.

Fortunately it's a warm sunny day today so I took the canvas outside, turned it so that the stretcher bars were facing up & sprayed the whole thing with a light mist of water. It was well saturated, but not dripping. I laid it on a table, again with the stretcher bars facing up, and within about 10 minutes the wrinkles were gone. I was afraid the gesso & paint might prevent the canvas from shrinking to fit, but it wasn't a problem.

Easy fix. For a change....