Can you paint over an existing oil painting on canvas with white and start again?

[OilPainting]

I would like to paint over an existing oil painting with white paint and start again. I am getting a bit confused by all of the conflicting information on Google and don't know if this would be possible.

Has anyone tried to do this? How successful was it?

My oil painting has gone wrong. It would be so good if I could restore the canvas to a white surface and start again!

Any advice gratefully received.

You can but the texture of your original painting might show through unless you can scrape it off. It doesn’t have to be white paint either. You could go with a mid tone like burnt umber or yellow ochre or whatever.

would it be possibly to scrape off the existing paint and start again from a clean canvas?

I would sand off the lumpy bits then paint over.

Hell yes, then when you’re long gone and dead famous and your paintings sell for £42m they’ll use X-rays. Or whatever they have then and make all sorts of slightly incorrect surmises about you as an artist.

Love it!

I don't think so. The oil paint has been dried for many months.

I don't think I even need to remove the lumpy bits as the painting I am doing is a landscape, so a rough texture will be fine probably!

I may end up doing this! It just seems wasteful to put the existing canvas in the bin if I could reuse it.

Grown up ones! Don’t think they would be interested in painting sadly.

Turn it round and paint on the other side. Two paintings for the price of one.

It’s fine. Just sand it slightly (wear a mask and hoover afterwards). Paint a few layers of titanium white. Wait to dry, then it’s fine.Dont be tempted to put a layer of acrylic primer over the existing oil though.

Also you want to sand , it’s not just to smooth the texture but to add tooth to the layer you’re painting over. It will be dry and therefore subsequent layers can bead up if you don’t do this.

Thanks for this tip!

I do this all the time. I must have 4 crappy paintings on the same canvas now......