How to make a gorgeous DIY hand-painted backdrop

 

There is more than one way to make a custom backdrop for your photography. There is also more than one way to do it: it’s usually cheap, you can make it exactly as you imagine, and as many as you want.

In this video, Luke Cleland shares his method of making a DIY canvas backdrop. You don’t need any fancy ingredients or tons of money, you can make it at home and customize it to pretty much any shooting need you have.

You will need:

• Canvas
• Primer paint (I recommend acrylic paint, it doesn’t have a strong odor and it dries quickly)
• Limewash paint
• A thick brush
• A paint roller
• A floor cover (you can use old newspaper instead)

How to make:

Start by protecting your floor, especially if you’re doing this indoors. The primer paint will seep through the canvas and you don’t want to scrape off the paint from your floor after you’re done.

Now that you’ve got that all set, lay the canvas over the floor and paint it with primer using a paint roller. Luke applied two coats of primer to make it as even as possible.

Now it’s time to give your backdrop its final look. Using a wide brush, paint “clouds” in different sections of the canvas, making sure to blend them around the edges. Keep going until the entire canvas is painted – and that’s it.

Luke created a pretty subtle off-white backdrop. Naturally, you can use any color you like, combine different shades of the same color, or even use a few different colors. It all depends on what you need and what you want to achieve. While this requires some of your time, I believe that the result will be absolutely worth it!

[I Hand-Painted a Canvas Photography Backdrop via FStoppers]