Plain Paint or Gesso?

Lonnie on Fri, 26th Sep 2008 12:45 am 



Soroya,

If your plain paint is oil paint the oil will rot your canvas.
Acrylic paint probably would not last as long as Gesso.

Jeni on Fri, 26th Sep 2008 1:52 am 



Hi Soroya,
What a great practical question for us beginners,
I do not use acrylics yet but I was talking to a friend the other day and she uses mostly acrylics and she said she covers paintings that she has lost inspiriation on and is wanting to use the canvas again with car paint and then starts and entirely new painting so it is propbably worth trying your idea or hers – we have similar product cost issues here living in Bali as every thing is imported ( except the car paint ) Many of the local people here also paint with acrylic house paint ( the owner of an art supply store told me this as he had heaps of it in his store) so that may be another option – please let us know how shat you come up with that is a success and much joy in your painting
Jeni

john bowmamn on Fri, 26th Sep 2008 2:14 am 



gesso or ordinary paint on canvas?
I have used house acrylic paint for over 20 years and no complaints with it.
the thing is to get a good quality acrylic
I use a self primer acrylic at present
Hope this helps

Gill on Fri, 26th Sep 2008 9:24 am 



My husband uses primer and it works just fine

Joyce Smith on Fri, 26th Sep 2008 10:41 am 



I live in Cyprus and art materials are not always easily available. I have been told the household emulsion paint is a good substitute for gesso – it is cheap and comes in a multitude of colours – good luck.

Soroya on Tue, 30th Sep 2008 1:58 pm 



OOPs what a goof I meant to write plain acrylic primer not prior hope everyone understood
Thank you all for the suggestions and encouragements. I will let you know how it worked out
~Soroya

Karin Wells on Thu, 2nd Oct 2008 5:25 pm 



Gesso is archival. Raw canvas requires a “barrier” or the paint won’t handle properly, will sink in and eventually rot the canvas.

Don’t use house paint -ever – if you are serious about painting and want your work to last.

House paint is for houses, not canvas.

Mike Walker on Tue, 14th Oct 2008 8:06 pm 



Hi Soroya,
I have used both acrylic primer and gesso on canvas. The primer is OK as long as you remember that the painting may not last as long. I normally gesso my canvases and use top quality materials for all my work so they will last well after I am gone. I also reflect this in my prices. I don’t see a problem with using “cheaper” materials that willl probably outlast yourself. Who knows how long modern acrylic paint will last when applied to canvas, & probably many professionals are using acrylic primers on their canvas. Go for it!

seemore clearly on Tue, 11th Nov 2008 2:46 am 



Until makers of “artists” colors put their formulations on the tube of paint, unless you are a chemist with a test facility, all you can do is take someone’s word that the paint will last. With acrylic house paint, Consumers and others test for longevity. If a good quality exterior paint lasts for 15 years under the harshest of conditions, on a properly prepared canvas and sealed afterword, a painting should last a pretty long time. Makers of artist’c colors have a bias–they want you to buy their expensive paint–and so won’t tell you that their formulation may be identical to Behr or Sherwin WIlliams or whoever.
Elsevier has at least 2 books out with hundreds of acrylic paint formulations and they cost 150$ each and they are meant for professionals in the trades. Obviously there are lots of possibilities in making acrylic paint.
Student quality paints may be house paints for all we know. When artist paint mfgrs start putting content labels on, then we can be sure of what we are getting. There is of course also the “snob” appeal of using Grumbacher instead of Sherwin-Williams. WHich brand did Pollack use? Oils crack, acylics can crack but they have plastisizers to prevent that so who knows. Acrylics don;t yellow.

angus on Wed, 1st Jul 2009 7:58 pm 



1.Plastic polymer paint is not Gesso. “Real” Gesso (which means ‘gypsum’ in Italian), is primarily rabbit glue and gypsum.
2.Most “gesso” used today is a plastic polymer.
3.Acrylic paint needs no “gesso”. Modern “gesso” was formulated by acrylic paint companies so they could sell more acrlic product. You can put acrylic paint directly on most grounds.
4.Oil and egg tempera paints should be used with their traditional gesso formulas, and not acrylic “gesso”. Acrylic “gesso” is too flexible for these paints.
5.All of the above only matters if a painting is expected to last a long time. You can use plactic under oil or cheap house paint primers if you do not care about eventual peeling or stretching. There have been cases where impoverished artists have used cheap materials, with unfortuate long-term results. On the other hand, if you use $100 a tube artist paint and are a hack, who will keep your acrchival-quality rubbish?
6.Student paints are better than house paints. House paint is designed with very cheap pigments. House paint does not need to last much longer than a decade. Student paints of low pigment quality would give the manufacturer a bad reputation in ten years, and they cannot afford that. I know this from speaking with a factory rep from a major supplier of artist and student paints. Student paints have less pigment, and sometimes may have lower quality pigments, but any from a reputable manufacturer are designed with lightfastness and stability in mind.

Jeremy Worst on Mon, 19th Oct 2009 5:36 am 



Angus …That should be all people need to here! .. use Gesso if you want to be proffesional about painting..

I stretch my own canvases and use the Liquitex Acrylic Gesso .. its awesome..and covered lots of huge canvases but it does cost alot if your not selling pieces on time….

check out my work at jeremyworst.blogspot.com
.-= Jeremy Worst´s last blog ..First Animal Painting … Bird =-.

Redsam on Thu, 17th Dec 2009 6:32 pm 



I have seen several sites where this discussion has the same two sides…the practical folks who recommend ordinary acrylic primer vs. the artist types who recommend ‘gesso’.
What I don’t understand (the purists never explained) why or how the artist gesso is different. After all, it is acrylic as well and as far as I know, they must buy ‘acrylic’ from the same manufacturers that make Home Depot style acrylic primer. If it is different somehow, I would like to know. Just the facts please. Oil paint gets past the acrylic primer and rots the canvas? Really? How come Rembrandt’s paintings did not rot? Please show me the pictures where the canvas has rotted. Thank you.

Jay Babina on Tue, 6th Apr 2010 10:56 am 



Gesso has a harder ground and more of it than regular acrylic paint. Regular acrylic house paint will leach oils through whereas gesso will not. House primer will leach too unless you use Bin or one of those that specifically state they will not leach. If you paint on Gesso with oils, you can use a paper towel and wipe away to a white surface. If you use common house paint it gets absorbed and you cannot. If you’re painting with oils on canvas you want Gesso so no oil infiltrates to the canvas. With Acrylic you don’t have to worry about that but the Gesso surface will be harder if that’s what you like. There’s really not much price difference of any between Gesso and a good house paint.

I paint oils on Masonite with a coat of Gesso and a 2nd coat of house paint. I like the absorbing quality when I paint plein air because my thin oil sketch dries fast but I have the protection of Gesso too.

Trisha on Tue, 27th Jul 2010 12:01 pm 



What about oil-based primers? would these be more effective on canvases?

wes on Thu, 19th Aug 2010 2:17 pm 



I used to use drywall primer, but my painting instructor made me try gesso. It lets the oil paint move allot better, and I feel it doesnt soak the paint up as much as drywall primer. Also, for acrylic paint it never made a difference to me.

AJ on Tue, 23rd Nov 2010 1:40 pm 



Gesso has glue remember? so all you guys have to do is buy oops paint from home depot couple bucks, add wood glue or simple paper glue and even chalk powder or gypsum if you would like and now you are a real artist because, real artist make their own crafts just ask Michelangelo, Picasso, and van.
by adding glue to house paint the oil wont soak the panel or the canvas anymore.

shajar on Thu, 6th Jan 2011 12:24 pm 



I’m also have a same problem like you soraya.. I got 1 way from internet searching how to replace gesso… take a look at this article..Basically I mix up stucco with PVA adhesive. You can get stucco relatively cheaply from DIY and hardware stores and PVA adhesive is available from many craft stores. Stucco can be bought in either ready mixed or powder form and provides really the ‘meat’ for the texture. However, as it is quite brittle when used thickly it is advisable to add the PVA adhesive. This gives it a bit more flexibility on a stretched canvas in particular, which it will need so that it does not break off. I tend to use a 4:1 mixture of stucco to PVA. please inform me if u success using above method..

Daisy on Fri, 28th Jan 2011 1:35 am 



I have paintings from the late 60′s and early 70′s that are in excellent shape. I used flat white latex paint on cotton duck. No complaints here.

Sparksrick on Fri, 4th Feb 2011 8:52 pm 



Asked myself, “Whats the difference between gesso ($10 a quart) and a good primer, such as Kilz. No, don’t own any paint stock.
Looked at the Material Safety Data Sheet for both Kilz and a couple of Gesso products. They’re all similar, variations are in the amounts and proprietary ingredients, that none of them will disclose.
Background:
Classis gesso: chalk (calcium carbonate) and hide glue.
Hide glue cracks over time because it absorbs moisture and will expand and contract. This allows oils to penetrate and rot the linen or cotton fibers in the canvas.
Enter acrylic polymer and modern gesso:
Chalk (ditto), titanium dioxide or some other white pigment, and an acrylic polymer emulsion, now water-based, although Bocour offered a mineral spirits-based version in the 1950′s. The acrylic which is much more stable than hide glue.
Enter Kilz: it has the same ingredients at half the price. A 2-gallon bucket at a familiar big box home improvement store near me is $25

Sparksrick on Fri, 4th Feb 2011 9:15 pm 



Oil of any kind will rot the fibers. Wad up a cotton rag saturated with oil paints in the bottom of a trash can, and you might even start a fire. The explanation for that is long, just don’t do that.
Acrylic Polymer emulsions made with water as the solvent have been around long enough to qualify as archival, almost a hundred years. The original acrylic artist paints, made by Bocour in the 50′s were made with mineral spirits and were compatible with traditional oil paints. Liquitex came out with the first tubes of water-based acrylic paints in the 60′s.
The purpose for priming or gesso-ing your support is to seal the canvas or seal the panel or whatever you’re planning to paint on, and provide a stable support for the medium you choose. The chalk and/or titanium dioxide and/or other pigment provides a nice surface for the media to cling to. Nope, artists acrylic paints do not have to be used over Gesso or primer. They stick to my clothes just fine for years.
The basic principle of paint versus primer is that primer provides an opaque background, because the grains are big flat flakes that overlap in the layer of binder, and hide anything underneath. Paint has finer grains, but you get what you pay for: the best paints have a higher proportion of pigment to binder.
Use a brand name “gesso” if it makes you feel more confident. Me, I need to save some coin, and I have a gallon of acrylic polymer emulsion water-based primer in the garage.

Maria LaPeca on Fri, 4th Mar 2011 10:21 am 



Wow, i am so happy to read all your comments. i do live paintings at my church. 8′x 8′. we reuse the canvas alot. i was thinking of saving my church lots of money by using regular acrylic paint primer instead of jesso. this art is created to match our pastors sermon and not intended to sell or last forever. i am so happy to read that i will be able to use regular primer instead for this. thank you all for your comments. enjoy painting. muah

Mitch on Mon, 7th Mar 2011 9:54 pm 



What about a first layer of regular acrylic primer and then 2nd or 3rd coats of acrylic gesso? I paint on hardboard and i would like to know if i could use regular to just get my board white so i dont have to use as much gesso.

the maximus on Mon, 25th Apr 2011 3:13 pm 



i was at joann fabrics getting some gesso well the framing lady told me that its just flat paint and that any flat paint will do, well i have one up on most of the folks here i think and i hope it helps, I use to own/run a painting company for about 15 years infact and i can tell you that a real good flat satin key word there satin or eggshell id say egg shell because satin has a shine and no, for the wizards out there satin and eggshell are not the same i have painted them next to each other they are not the same but to answer the question in bold print all you have to do is write a letter to the maker of the gesso brand you use and they have to under the consumers rights law give you a free copy of the chemical breakdown of there product because it is so widely used and yes toxic then compare the notes and see what is different id say that the gesso is more stretchy i think it has a silicone in it as to where reg house paint does not but unless your leaving your paintings in the rain id say try a couple what ya got to loose besides 20 bucks for trying there is an old saying try caus in 20 yr’s you can look back and say i know what would have happend because i atleast tried it!

albatross on Tue, 24th May 2011 3:52 pm 



Just to add a little confusion. I use ‘Dulux Weathershield’ Smooth masonary paint instead of Gesso. I had a conversation with a VERY knowledgable professional in the field of ‘paint research’. He told me that Dulux spend millions of $ or £ on research developing coatings. He catagorically stated that the acrylic polymer in the ‘Weathershield’ product is the best acrylic polymer available. I’m in the UK. I don’t know what is available in your countries. It is half the price of a cheap gesso. If you want to see the spec’s go to the Dulux website.

Des on Wed, 6th Jul 2011 6:19 am 



I have been following the discussion and would like to try some gesso. I have managed to get hold of some at a local art store, but there is no instructions on the jar. How do I apply it? Do I dilute it? I am planning to paint a carpet.

linda on Sun, 30th Oct 2011 7:54 am 



thanks for the great tips on gesso vrs acrylic primer. I’ll be testing this out myself shortly, and I’ll post anything interesting I discover.

billy on Tue, 24th Jan 2012 6:12 pm 



All gesso contains acrylic emulsion consisting of titanium white, calcium carbonate and liquid plastic. It’s important to use a gesso that does not contains vinyl as it will peel. The difference between gesso is the amount of ingredients a manufacturer puts into the gesso. An artist gesso would have more tooth and flexibility and better opacity than a house primer. Flexibility when dry is important. Check the canvas when dry and fold and see if the gesso cracks or shirrs at the end; can it be sanded or does it flake off? Are their air bubles? If so, this will lead to cracking. Gesso creates a barrier so the paint won’t soak through to the canvas so you don’t have to use as much paint. Also, if you use an oil paint the linseed oil can eat through the canvas, so it is not advisable to use a house primer as they aren’t archival.
House Paint gives a “false hide” which works great on walls but not a flexible surface such as canvas or paper.

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