![]() If you have a thicker tarp or a roll of foam insulation, this also could work great for keeping the surface smooth. I had a 10′ x 20′ ft blue tarp from Home Depot and I used painters tape to tape down the edges. Since you may be doing multiple coats, the canvas will bleed through and you don’t want to ruin your floors or make a huge mess. My next recommendation is to lay down a tarp. If you have a big driveway or parking lot and the weather permits it, go outside and paint! I feel like painting on your carpet at home may not be the best idea. I used my Photography Studio space to paint and I recommend that you do this project in a big open space with hard floors and windows for ventilation. I measured out 10 feet of canvas and cut it down. Since this was my first go, I wanted to create a smaller canvas that I could use for beauty, headshots and portraits. I bought a roll of 53″ wide x 6 yards of unprimed canvas from Michaels. I blocked off time for myself on a Friday afternoon and went for it and I’m so glad I did!īelow you will find my journey in creating my first hand-painted canvas backdrop! How to Make a Canvas Photography Backdrop I had no tutorial or instructions, I was texting with my Mom and another friend who both are painters about what supplies I may need. After not hearing anything from this artist, I found myself in the middle of the craft store buying my own roll of canvas and paint on a whim. ![]() I had been in contact with a local artist about creating some custom canvas pieces for my studio but it was such a chore to just get in touch with them and wait weeks (months) for an email back. I wanted my canvas backdrops to be custom, created with me in mind my lighting, my style, my composition, my favorite colors and textures so I ended up taking matters in my own hands. Sure, we can all use the backdrop differently, but honestly with some of those patterns I saw, I did not feel like there was that much room for creative interpretation. I also didn’t want it to be a backdrop that I bought along with 5,000 other photographers. It would be easy for me to just buy a backdrop from Adorama or B&H and be done with it however there was nothing that I quite loved enough to push the BUY button. I found that a lot of the mass-produced backdrops looked too generic and somewhat dated. There are so many different canvas and muslin recreations but nothing beats a custom, hand-painted backdrop. I wanted brush strokes and texture – not a tie-dyed sheet! So with lack of resources for what and how to do it, I put the idea of a DIY background in the back of my head. A lot of people ended up dying muslin, but that wasn’t what I wanted to deal with. I often thought about creating my own backdrop and google was no help on tutorials or tips. To have my own Oliphant backdrop would be a huge milestone and investment in my career. You can get anything from metallic backdrops to custom scenic sets. ![]() ![]() Sarah Oliphant and her team create the most exquisite customize backdrops for photographers, cinematographers and more. I would often spend nights browsing the web for the best canvas backdrops and frankly nothing really stuck out to me except Oliphant Studios. I would always be on the lookout for a great textured wall to use in a portrait session. I love finding textured backgrounds for my shoots and I think that comes from me starting out my photography training shooting outdoors. The backdrops looked amazing with natural light and with strobes and modifiers. There was a room with a wall of numerous hand-painted canvas in many different colors and I always gravitated to that room. My first encounter using these was a couple years back when I would use the Graffiti Warehouse in Baltimore for some model test shoots. I love how timeless these canvas backdrops are at first glance I felt like these types of backdrops were for boring school portraits only, but I’ve seen them used in so many fashion and portrait shoots that I knew I had to have some for myself! When you do a quick google search for Old Masters Canvas Backdrops, you see a lot of really dated photography (#sorrynotsorry hence the word old) that uses these backdrops in an un-timeless way. Since I’ve been primarily shooting in the studio this year, the majority of my work has evolved from outdoor natural-light to an indoor, studio light type of situation and I’m always on the prowl for new and exciting elements that I can add into my shoots. For the past year I’ve been obsessing over hand-painted, old masters canvas backdrops. ![]()
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