In Style: Gesso Edition

This month, Michelle Ward's Crusade is about the properties of gesso. I don't know about you, but I love the stuff. When I first started arting, I used to resist using it, but now I will use it to resist. I've used it to prepare surfaces, which is its stated use, but then I started playing around with its texture a bit. I found that when it's thick its bumpiness can give what's laid on top of it some extra umph.

Using Michelle's example, I wanted to play with it as a resist. I started with the white gesso stamped over a simple painted page.


I love this page! I'd never used gesso as a stamping medium, and this looks so awesome as it is--thick and bold and WHITE! But I wanted to try out the resist application, so I washed over the stamped images with some lime green mixed with tan.


I think it turned out really well, here. I'll use this as a background on a couple of my journal pages.


Then I had the idea of tinting the white gesso with some color, so I stamped out these images in blue- and purple- and rose-colored gesso. I used some stenciling as well. But then I thought... how could my clear gesso figure in the picture? Would it resist at all? Or, would it disappear? I used the dome stamp with clear gesso, and incorporated that on the page along with the colored gesso.


You can see a bit of the texture from the clear gesso, particularly in the lower left corner, although you obviously can't see the image itself. My goal was to wash thinly over the entire surface and hope the dome image would become apparent along with the other images.

This is the page after the wash is applied. Excuse the photos. The first one is with a flash; the second one is without a flash, which altered the true rose color.





In both of them, you can make out the texture and a hint of the dome stamped with clear gesso among the colored gesso images. The clear gesso obviously resists the acrylic wash, but it serves mostly as texture. I wasn't quite as satisfied with this page. But I'm going to try a nice heavy application of clear gesso on an all-over stamping next time. Without the colored images, I think the clear gesso will resist the wash, allowing its texture to come through all over the page.

I'll add that photo here once I've done the page. I love doing backgrounds, and in view of my upcoming journal work, they're going to be put to good use.


Next up: Chris applies too much clear gesso and can't find the finished page.