Have you ever wondered what these little pieces of wood are for when you buy a new canvas? Well in today's video, I'm going to show you exactly what you should be doing to make sure that a new canvas is primed and ready to go coming up How you doing that guys? I'm here from Painting Pneum, I'm giving you some top tips for all things art and design and if you're new to this channel And you want to learn about painting or get some new weekly top tips Then do hit that subscription button just below guys because we do upload videos every Wednesday and Saturday And this channel is all about developing your art skills So in today's video we're going to go right back to the basics But it's something that so many people actually aren't aware of and that is how to really prime a brand new canvas Properly now when I was training in art I would always make my own canvases so literally cut the wood cut the canvas Prem the canvas, lay the whole thing up. Nowadays they are so much cheaper Then most people are pre buying this from art shops But there are certain things like this that we're not always fully aware of and a lot of people just dismiss them and throw them away You will be astonished at the difference at these little things make in terms of improving your paint skills And in this video, I'm going to show you exactly why let's have a look So this is a typical type of canvas that you might buy in the shops guys There will say sometimes they've already been pre-primed off and they'll say they've been double coated I would never trust that because I want to actually have complete control over my canvas If you turn over you'll notice that they usually come with something like this This is a little bag of inserts which are actually designed for creating more tension into your canvas A lot of people just dismiss these and throw them out actually you should really be using these things So all you want to do is hit them right here They simply go into these slots here you can see there's some little slots or shun camera These little slots just here and they were just going to fit in so I'm just going to put in one And then Sometimes you actually want to do the job I think that's actually working quite nicely There is space for a second one if you feel it's not tense enough, but that's pretty good You'll actually notice the tension of this instantly when you put these in So I would always suggest you do this before you put the dress out onto your canvas because again It's about having lots of good tension so that you don't get any wrinkles into your canvas The end of the day if you're doing something that's quite thick so if you're using like an impaster paint for example You really want to make sure that you've got plenty of tension Into your canvas itself just put that one in there And push it all the way in and then we are good to go so the difference now Almost feels like a drum whereas earlier it was a little bit saggy So now we're ready to actually put the dress out on Jesso is something that can be quite expensive And I'm a big fan of making my own ingredients So I have actually done a video recently where I show you the ingredients of making your own dress at home Just using some basic ingredients And that's what I'm going to use straight away if you're interested in seeing that video guys I'll leave a link just below Now when it comes to putting dress on itself I'm a big fan of actually just pouring it straight onto the canvas And then there's two little tricks I like to use One is this big brush This is absolutely fantastic for really distributing paint quickly particularly for things like this The other one is actually a shower cleaner These are also just as effective Today I'm going to go with the brush just because it gives me a little bit more consistency So you're literally just going to spread it all the way across Some people like to do the edges as well Now remember the benefits of actually putting Jesso onto your canvas Is that you're actually enabling the paints to stick So there's a little bit of grit in this I've actually put some talcum powder into my Jesso Some people just like to use PVA and water which is just as fine I've also previously used as primer paint some cheap primer paint But if you have a little bit of talcum powder in there you get a really effective slight subtle texture And it just means that you're able to actually allow the acrylic paint to really grip onto the canvas itself If you were not to use Jesso guys The difference is that all your paints are going to get absorbed into the actual canvas And that everything becomes an awful lot more difficult Top tip as well here If you are doing something like a blended background If you're doing a sunset Or if you're doing a very subtle blend of background You will want to be working onto a wet primer Because this will actually help blend those colours together Once you're happy And actually if I'm doing a fine detail painting like now Then I'll actually let this dry Then I'll do another coat onto this as well Just to make sure that I'm fully covered with my primer So there have it guys Have been enjoyed today's video And seen how just more little pieces of wood like this Can make a massive difference when it comes to really improving your art skills If you have enjoyed today's video Then do hit that like button And subscribe button just below Because it really does help our channel And it will help you get some more weekly top tips We do upload videos every Wednesday and Saturday guys So if you hit that notification bell just below You know when we're coming back online Alright guys, we'll see you next time Happy painting