Franz Kline began his career as a traditional painter and illustrator. But abstraction called. He would "sketch" his ideas with ink on old telephone book pages. One night while visiting fellow artist Willem DeKooning some of his sketches were projected up onto the wall and the rest is history-he saw how powerful they could be as large paintings.
Recently one of Kline's paintings "Nijinsky" from 1950 has been studied. He had painted over an older canvas-maybe one of those traditional paintings that didn't sell-that had as many as 15 layers. It seems that he primed over those layers and then continued with his signature black and white. Unfortunately the paint surface began to have issues in the 1960's.
I have painted over many paintings-a few I wish I hadn't! Many painters do. Just a word of caution-make sure your primer, gesso, etc. works with whatever is already there.
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