There’s so much to learn when you’re slinging paint and pencil, so here’s the ninth installment in my monthly segment, Muddy Colors: Art Tip of the Month with Jeff Miracola. Each of my short videos will share a handy tip to help you create magnificent art.
My art tip this month is: Retaining Texture in Gesso
In this video, I show you a few tips on how to retain the brushstrokes in your gesso so you can add more texture to your painting surface. I also show you a handy tip for creating a rake tool that you can use to carve into your gesso.
Jeff . . . thanks. Your tips are always useful and dead on. Thought I’d share my own gesso tips with you. They are more random in nature, but produce some interesting textures. I will put down gesso thickly, a la Jeff. Let it partially dry, and use a variety of things to produce texture: a raggedy old whisk broom, a somewhat large palette knife, wadded up newspaper or Saran wrap, a large and nearly worn out old paint brush. I drag, dab, scrape and “smoosh.” You can also increase or decrease texture by choosing how dry is your gesso. Also, you can use a “furry” paint roller, and again, wait for varying degrees of dryness in your gesso. My method is more random than is yours, and I thank your showing me a more precise manner of texturing specific areas of my painting surface.
My pleasure, Richard. Yeah, the sky is the limit on what you can do to add texture to gesso. For me, the important thing is making sure I can force it to quickly dry or dry upside-down so it holds it’s form. It’s been very helpful for me. I have used a “furry” paint roller to apply gesso as well. It gives a really nice orange peel texture 🙂
Nice, thanks for sharing! Looks like raking a zen pebble garden 😀
Applying thick gesso with a sponge brush, wait a few minutes then drag it again at right-angle to previous direction … voila! … a nice canvas-like texture.
Thanks again!!!