Comments on: Plain Paint or Gesso?

By: Trisha

Trisha — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 16:01:21 +0000

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

By: Jay Babina

Jay Babina — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 14:56:13 +0000

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.

By: Redsam

Redsam — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 23:32:19 +0000

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.

By: Jeremy Worst

Jeremy Worst — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 09:36:17 +0000

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

By: angus

angus — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 19:58:58 +0000

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.