touching up canvas

[namartinnz]

Fair call about the risks of re-printing vs retouching - and using difference materials. For my purposes the retouch is a minor spot, which may well have been best left alone but for my fixating on it looking perfect  -and would have been fine without fixing. I wrote off a 1.2m  x 900 canvas the other day for a minor defect, not worth the time to repair. $$$ ruined but long term of course reputations are at stake.

[Kanvas Keepsakes]

I personally only re-touch black areas that have issues.  Maybe a flake of white or so.  Those DikBlick Pens never worked for me unless it was a black spot.  If you flake off a small area and expose the white canvas behind a light blue area or yellow, try using those markers to paint over.  You can see a tint of yellow or blue and the white behind the tint.  It's not like acrylic which you can fill in.  99% of the time it's a reprint because no matter how much it looks ok, I always put it up to the light and it screams right at me every time.  I'll never send a print off to a customer with any noticable blemishes.  Way too risky reputation wise. 

[Justan]

The anti re-touch comments are well founded and I agree it is not a good idea to add foreign media to the work. The reason to avoid different media is because of the varying ways inks and other things age. Something that is invisible initially may become less so over time. The most likely thing that creeps in when doing a repair is yellowing due to contamination. This can be mostly avoided by wearing exam gloves and a surgical mask when working near canvas. I have a beard and always wear a mask when working with wet canvas for this reason, plus to avoid hand related contaminants, I *always* use exam gloves.

Yet canvas is a flawed media. I just printed and coated a roll of canvas and found several places where I thought there was a problem. Upon looking with my 6x magnifying glass I saw the “problem” was just a  variation on the weave. Anywho, if a repair can be made that is invisible to the artist, and you aren’t messing with the ingredients, there is no reason not to do so.