How To Tame Your Canvas

First you choose your canvas size. This is called sizing up the catch.

Secondly you either make the purchase in an art store or make a special order (if the kill is particularly formidable). If you go to Creative Hands, you can purchase three pieces together at a cheaper price. This is called tackling the herd.

Thirdly you bring the canvas home.
Keep in mind that before you tame the canvas, it is a wild animal. It will fight the fight of the cornered beast. However, you, the artist, must have the courage to do what is right and not back down.

After that, you may proceed to hunt in one of three ways:
1. paint on unprimed surface. You are relying on a combination of luck and machismo for interesting and unpredictable results. This is called tracking by heavenly signs. You are fearless and I respect you.
2. paint on primed surface. You are rigging the canvas to maximise your hunting advantage. Canvases are basically stretchable cloth and priming the canvas makes it vulnerable to the advances of your brush. This can also be called trap-rigging.
3. paint on washed background. The safest option, in my view. In order to maximise psychological advantage over the canvas, you cover the entire primed surface with one colour (usually the dominant colour / undertone that you are working with). This is called setting up enclosure, in Chinese 关门打狗.

After this it is pretty much up to your hunterly skills and styles. For example, painters may tackle a small part of the painting at a time, which takes a longer time. This is also called hunting by attrition, or stalking the rabbit hole.

On my part, I tend to be less nice with such animals. My painting approach mirrors Mental Ray's mode of rendering images and Genghis Khan's mode of conquering Eurasia. The policy is to paint in multiple passes, gradually improving in the treatment of detail as more passes are performed. This is why it is similar to Mental Ray, and why it is also called whittling escape routes on the chase.

The end product is already established and is recognisable in the first pass. Almost on the word go, the canvas' defiance will give way to raw terror and helplessness. This is why the method is also called scorched-earth.

Attrition or no, now that you have the canvas under your power (I assume- no, of course you never gave up). It would be befitting of you, the new owner of this piece of livestock, to place your mark of ownership upon the canvas. This is usually referred to as signing.

You can also bestow upon the painting (yes, it's a painting now) its own name. I know people outside Scandinavia generally feel funny about individually naming their animals. In the code of painters however, this is very much the norm. But if your painting has been unruly, feel free to incur upon it the name Untitled, just to show the accursed beast who's boss.