I just want to place a note here about the cost of art supplies; sometimes people don't understand how expensive a roll of canvas is, or even a tube of paint. Personally, I spend at least a hundred dollars on brushes alone each year— I need to be able to paint a crisp line, and after several sessions, brushes tend to splay out like the tails of angry cats.
Yesterday, after realizing that the 14" Fredrix stretcher bars I needed were no longer available online— ANYWHERE— I took a look at the number and size of stretcher bars I have, and then ordered a boatload of them in various sizes from my local art supply store. The problem is that ordering bars from a different manufacturer means they won't fit. I've been badly surprised before when I tried to pair a set of, say, 20" Blicks with 16" Fredrix. Further investigation into the matter reveals that the Fredrix brand was purchased by a company named MacPherson last April. I don't know what the future holds for the Fredrix brand of stretcher bars, so I figured better safe than sorry; thus the big and unexpected purchase.
I also noticed the price of linen canvas rolls was shockingly high. You can pay anywhere between $500 and $1600 for six yards of primed linen. This means those larger paintings you want to do, say a 30" x 40," will be very costly for you to produce, right out of the gate, before any paint actually hits the canvas. And the accompanying heavy-duty stretcher bars in that size will add another $50. So when you see a four-figure price tag on a finished work, consider what goes into it, besides the amount of time the artist spends making it.
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