What Is Gallery Wrapped Canvas?
Make any photo, art piece or illustration into an instant gallery-quality print. Easy to put up, they create a professional look at an affordable price. Scott Murphy's award-winning photography can be printed quickly with this technique so you can have it ready to hang on your walls in just a few days.
So what is it?
Gallery wrap is a method of stretching an artist's canvas so that the canvas wraps around the sides of the stretcher bar or strainer bars and is secured to the back of the wooden frame. This means the image appears on the sides of the frame as well as the front.
Do I need to do anything special?
Gallery wrap is one of our most popular ways to display canvas art. It should be noted that the edges of the canvas are wrapped over the thick 1 to 1 1/2 inch bars. Because of this, approximately two inches of the image (top, bottom, and sides) are not visible from the front. Professional designers take this into account when presenting artwork to be gallery wrapped.
This method ensures there are no visible fasteners (such as staples or tacks) and creates a frame-less presentation of the finished image.
Look for These Five Important Signs of a Professional Gallery Wrap: - Tight Stretch: Good gallery wraps are stretched tightly over the stretcher bars to maintain a flat, unaltered image. On canvases that are not tightly stretched, waves or bumpy areas, especially on areas around the stretcher bars, can be seen and felt.
- Hand Stretched: Hand stretched canvases are the best option because this reduces the possibility of over-stretching. Machines may over stretch the image, causing rips or breaks in the ink of the image. Hand stretched canvases also allow for humans to align the image in a more visually appealing way, being sure not to cut off any parts of the main image which a machine would not be able to detect.
- Clean Staples: On the back of the canvas, good gallery wraps are stapled cleanly and securely.
- Clean Folds: Good gallery wraps have clean folds on the edges. You can see the nice folds on the corners that show they are hand stretched, but no extra pieces of canvas are sticking out or causing extra lumps under the image.
- Solid Wood Stretcher Bars: Good quality wraps should have good foundations. Solid wood stretcher bars provide a good base for stretching and keep the canvas from bowing or bending over time.
