Canvas for oil painting... how does it compare to ordinary cotton canvas?

Do poeple who paint fine art with oils use a special kind of canvas to paint on, or is it just similar to ordinary cotton canvas like you would find in a dry goods store? Is the surface prepared a special way?Canvas for oil painting... how does it compare to ordinary cotton canvas?
Artists canvases come in cotton duct or linen or the more expensive silk. A framed canvas bought at art supply stores is pre-primed with a coat of gesso. This gesso primer prevents the oil or acrylic paint from 'bleeding' through the canvas. It also provides a smooth surface to paint on and the gesso provides 'teeth' that the paint adheres to.





The bolts of unprimed cotton duct you can by at a dry goods store won't provide this protection. And the threads are course and don't make very good painting surfaces.





However, many serious artists will buy bolts of unprimed canvas from art supply stores and stretch and prime (gesso) the canvas themselves. I always do this on my larger canvases because it's much less expensive than buying a large primed canvas. Gesso is cheap and can be bought in gallon cans.Canvas for oil painting... how does it compare to ordinary cotton canvas?
Just one correction: the proper term is ';cotton duck'; (like the animal), not ';duct';. It comes from the Dutch ';doek';, i.e. ';linen canvas';.

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I used to stretch and prime my own canvases many moons ago.





But with the increasing competition in the marketplace the price of ready made canvases has now dropped to acceptable levels.





The stretching is time consuming if you do it well. When priming your own canvas you tend to get a lot of blobs and pills of cotton forming under the Gesso, which can mean light sanding, then more priming. All in all, it's too time consuming.





It would cost me more in time to make them myself now. I'm better off putting that time and energy into making more art.
As far as I know from painting classes acrylic and oil paints use the same types of canvas, prepared in the same way, with gesso (a paint/glue mixture that helps to seal the cloth and make a smoother surface to paint on). Some artists like to make their own canvas', I find it about the same price to just go to an art supply store, or craft store and purchase a premade canvas. Check out dickblick.com. I buy most of my canvas from them, they offer really good explanations of their materials and are very helpful.

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