Polyester Cloth Canvas is a synthetic material and has unique properties compared to other cloth types, making it increasingly popular for artistic purposes.

Polyester Cloth - Stretched Canvas
Polyester cloth yarn is thin and tightly interlaced such that a very smooth final finish is achieved. This makes the surface ideal for high detail or portrait work, with very little paint bleed occurring on brush lines. The cloth is significantly stronger than Cotton Duck or Linen, allowing tighter stretching with the resulting surface having little give to applied brush strokes.

Polyester Cloth’s moisture absorption is extremely low and therefore has resilience to shrinking or swelling; a stretched canvas is stable without the need of a humidity-controlled environment, and as such the cloth can be worked on un-stretched with little creep or shrinkage occurring.

Polyester cloth appears as a clean, bleached white colour. This brightness gives the picture from the outset an added effect of clearness and luminosity. As with Cotton Duck, Winsen’s Canvases carries 2.1 meter-wide Polyester Cloth rolls, and given its strength, suited for very large canvas panels. Light resistance is also extremely good, having the best resistance to direct daylight.

Priming of Polyester cloth canvases

Although Polyester Cloth shows good resistance to chemicals that can occur in oil or acrylic paints, a primer used is essential to ensure adequate adhesion of oil and acrylic paints, whilst obtaining a support that is flexible and enhances the unique inherent characteristics of the fibre. By default, we double-prime the cloth with an Acrylic Gesso or so-called Acrylic Dispersion Ground. This non-cracking soft polymer based primer uses a combination of high quality, 100% pure acrylic resins with plasticisers, achieving required flexibility while maintaining good levels of pigment strength. Extenders within the primer are Calcium Carbonate and Titanium dioxide (whitener), realising a PH balance of 8.7 The final finish is matt white, with slight tooth for film adhesion.

  • The application of a ground, or size layer, is an option for artist’s working in oil paints. This pure acrylic emulsion is hydrophobic in nature, reducing liquid permeability while maintaining crack, chalk and alkali resistance. Having excellent dry and wet adhesion, this coating provides an additional barrier between the oils in the paints and raw canvas surface.
  • Extra coatings can be applied to render a smoother finish and more lustrous appearance.
  • We can also size and prime Polyester Cloth with an absorbent ground, making it suitable for water colour application.

In summary, Polyester Cloth’s strength, very fine texture and durability make it ideal for high detail or palette knife artwork.

 References

  • The Artist’s Handbook of Materials and Techniques. Fifth edition. Ralph Meyer
  • The Artist’s Pocket Guidebook. Jim Cobb and Kirk Miller
  • The Painters Handbook. Mark David Gottsegen.
  • The Materials of the Artist and their use in Painting. Max Doerner.