Hi there and welcome to August Trio! Trios are posts that I started while I was a member of the Seth Apter Creative Team. I enjoyed making the series of three posts so much, that I decided to continue them at least for a while. If you want to see the older Seth Trios, you can find them under this label (link). The Trio posts usually had a topic, or a product, to which I concentrated, like Izink ICE (link). Or I could challenge myself with limited supplies (link) or use one source of inspiration for three pieces, like I did with "Mothers of Kalevala" (link). In a way they are extended versions of the "Inspired By" posts we used to make together with Marsha Valk. You can explore those posts under this label (link).
I've been hinting the theme of August here and there already, but let's declare it now loud and clear. This month's theme is gesso! When I was thinking the theme for this month, I kind of went back to the basics and also realized that I had the perfect number of gessos - white, clear and black. While there's other colors as well, and you can even tint your own, I guess these three are the most common.
It was a no-brainer to think about the order of the gessos. White needed to be the first one as that's the stuff you see by far the most. Majority of the the ready canvases are primed using white gesso, for example. I then continue with the clear gesso as I wanted to save my favorite as the last - the black gesso. There's use for every gesso, but if I'd have to choose just one, I guess I would go with black. Although, probably the smart thing to do would be choosing clear gesso and color it to any color you like.
Gesso is a primer. The gessos I'm working with in these three videos are all acrylic based. Gesso layer is meant to seal the surface, like a canvas, so that the colorants stick on top of it rather than get absorbed into the fabric, thus increasing the amount of colorant you need to use. As the colorant, the pigments are the costly part, gesso makes your colors also last longer. Gesso also gives a ground, some tooth to a surface where certain colorants would have a hard time sticking to. These are non-absorbing surfaces like glass or metal. Gesso rather sticks to a surface rather than gets absorbed into it.
All of these properties can be used in different ways. In the course of the three videos I show you some techniques and share some ideas how to use gesso more in your mixed media than just priming and painting. Most of the techniques apply to all of the gessos, but there's exceptions. I usually mention that in my voice-over, but they are also very commonsense exceptions.
In this first video I share four ideas - toning down, stenciling, dry brushing and splashes. While you could use any acrylic paint for a couple of these, like the splashes and dry brushing, I wanted to point out that you can get away with just using gesso. It's kind of making the most of what you got! Please see the video below to see these in action.
OK, that's all for today! I hope you liked the video and got some new ideas about the usage of gesso. Please be back tomorrow for another episode of the series! That's when I tackle the clear gesso.
Thank you for visiting today!
Materials: Prima Marketing, Tim Holtz, Aladine, StencilGirl
No comments:
Post a Comment