The acrylic primer on prepared canvases or available in stores is usually labeled “gesso.” It’s not actually gesso and manufacturers shouldn’t call it that. For oil painting, I find real gesso to be a much better surface than acrylic primer. Egg tempera and tempera grassa should be used only with real gesso panels. Gesso should only be used on inflexible supports (i.e., panels), because it is too brittle for canvas and will crack.
Gessoing is easy and almost foolproof, but time-consuming. It takes an afternoon to gesso a panel. On the other hand, it takes an afternoon to gesso five, ten, or twenty panels, so it pays to produce them in volume. I generally invest three or four afternoons a year in making enough panels to provide me with a steady supply.
Here’s how to make and apply gesso:
Materials
Hide glue (often labeled “rabbitskin glue” whether it contains any rabbit or not). Most major art suppliers have this.
Inert white pigment. This is powdered chalk or gypsum. The marble dust you can buy in art stores is chalk. Plaster of Paris is cooked (anhydrous) gypsum, but I have found it too gritty to make good gesso. (The word “gesso” means “gypsum” in Italian, since that’s what Italians made gesso from. In Northern Europe, chalk was the traditional material). You can buy good-quality powdered gypsum from specialty suppliers like Kremer.
Titanium white pigment. This is optional. Some people like to substitute up to 20% of the inert white pigment in the recipe below with titanium white, for brightness. I haven’t found it worth the bother.
Panel. There are various materials you can use for panel painting. One good option is to buy hardboard at the home improvement or hardware store. You can buy it cheaply in 4 foot by 8 foot sheets. Get tempered hardboard 1/4 inch thick. The staff at the store will probably cut it to size for you if you ask. Other materials you can use for panel include medium density fiberboard (MDF) and actual wood planks. Wood panels of any size, however, are best seasoned for 1–3 years, with planing to size if it warps, after it has been cut to final size.
Wide flat brush. A good house painting brush will do.
A double boiler. I don’t like commercial double boilers because there is too much contact between the metal pans. Instead, I use a pair of very cheap pans—one small, one large. I use an empty tuna can to support the small pan in the large pan.
Measuring spoons, mixing spoons.
Sandpaper. Several grits.
Preparing hide glue
Make the hide glue the day before you plan to gesso the panel. Hide glue normally comes in powder or granular form. Mix one part hide glue with 11 parts warm tap water. One cup makes about enough to size and gesso two 8 × 10” panels, depending on how many layers of gesso you apply. Stir the water/glue mixture for about five minutes, then let it sit for 6–24 hours or so. It will form a thick gelatin. If the weather is very hot (95 degrees Fahrenheit+), it might not gel properly unless you put it in the refrigerator.
Preparing and sizing the panel
The edges of the panel should be smoothed with sandpaper or a rasp. Clean the panel with denatured alcohol to remove any trace of oil or other guck.
Now you want to coat the panel in a layer of hide glue. This is called sizing the panel because another word for hide glue is “size.” You’ll start by warming the glue to make it fluid. If you heat the glue too much, it will weaken the glue. As it turns out, hot tap water is about the right temperature to liquefy glue without damaging it. So fill the outer pan of your double boiler with hot tap water and put the glue into the inner pan. In about ten minutes, it will be about the consistency of milk (whole milk, not that low fat stuff). Brush the glue over the front, back, and sides of the panel. Give it a half hour to dry.
I generally add more layers of glue to the back. The reason is that the glue in the gesso on the front will be applying force to the panel. If the panel is large, this will noticeably warp the panel. So I generally add about four layers of glue to the back in order to counteract the warping effect that the gesso will apply to the front. This seems to help a lot.
Making gesso
Measure the volume of the remaining glue and pour it back into the double boiler. You will be adding 1.5 times this volume of chalk or gypsum to make gesso. Do this gradually, gently dropping each spoonful into the liquid to avoid making any bubbles. Distribute the chalk/gypsum around the pan so that it the glue soaks into it. Once all of the chalk/gypsum is in the pot, give it 10 minutes to soak. Now take a brush and gently stir the mixture, again trying to avoid making any bubbles.
Applying the first layer of gesso
For the first layer, spread it thinly over the surface of the panel, stroking back and forth in one direction. It’s not very opaque when wet. Let it dry; this takes 10–30 minutes, depending on humidity and temperature (dry days are best for gessoing panels). You’ll know it’s dry when it feels dry to the touch and any grayish areas have disappeared. Cennino, a 15th century Italian artist and writer, suggested rubbing the first layer in with your hand rather than spreading with a brush. That’s messy, but works just fine and may improve adhesion.
If the gesso in your pan is getting thick, it means that it’s cooling off. Replace the water in the double boiler with new hot tap water. Don’t overdo it; this is usually necessary only once every 30–60 minutes or so.
Applying the rest of the gesso
You will apply 6–8 layers of gesso. Brush strokes in each layer should be applied at right angles to those of the previous layer. Each layer is best applied shortly after the previous layer has become dry. It’s best to apply all layers in one day, so that they will bond with each other. If you get cracking, that means that you’re applying the gesso before the previous layer has dried. More layers will fix this. If you get little pits in the gesso, then you’re painting with gesso that has bubbles in it. Let the gesso stand for a half hour before applying any more, then rub the next layer in with your hand.
Once you’ve applied all the gesso, let the panel dry for at least three days. You can clean the brush, pan, and anything else that got gesso on it in warm water.
Smoothing the panel
Start by using a metal file to chamfer all of the edges of the gesso, so that they are at a beveled angle inward. This protects against cracking, should the panel strike something (I’ve had this happen with a large panel that I put a lot of work into, and it’s very irritating).
To get the panel smooth, I like to use a sanding block, starting with 400 grit sandpaper and moving to finer grits at the end. This produces a beautiful, eggshell-smooth finish that is almost too beautiful to paint on.
If I’m going to be painting with oil, I like to apply a final layer of hide glue to the smoothed surface of the panel. Without that, the gesso is a bit too absorbent. Others use a thin layer of shellac or varnish to reduce absorbency; I haven’t tried that.
For egg tempera or tempera grassa, plain gesso works great.
David—thanks for this recipe and for your useful website. When you say you apply a final layer or rsg solution to the panel if you’re painting in oils, is this solution the same strength as the original i.e.: 1 part rsg to 11 of water?
Also are all your paintings on show here done on a gesso’ed panel?
Jenny,
Yes, the glue I apply on top of the gesso for oil painting, is full strength.
Some of the paintings are on gesso; some are on panels prepared with lead white primer. I’ve even been known to paint on acrylic primer, but I prefer not to.
Hi Thanks a lot for your post I was seeking for this Gesso formula. I actually have a question… you know what´s the difference between Gesso and Crete?if there´s any
Esmava,
I’m glad you found th information helpful. I’m afraid I have no idea what “crete” is (other than an island in the Mediterranean).
Crete is chalk/calcium carbonate, same thing. So Gesso would use Crete/chalk , but Gesso is NOT crete/chalk.
Titanium,
Thanks for the clarification.
Many thanks David.
Have successfully coated 6 boards and must now wait 3 days for them to dry. Apart from a smell of wet dog all went well. Presumably I don’t attempt to sandpaper them for at least 3 days? The panels are not the only thing to get plastered.
Anyway, thanks again. It’s all rather satisfying.
Jill.
Jill,
Three days should be plenty of time.
Good luck!
Hi,
I just gessoed a bunch of panels and two are cracked which never happens. I was told where I bought the glue to use between 120g-150g to 1 litre of water.
In the past I have always used 80 g to 1 liter. The man who sold me the glue insisted his proportions were right for this new rabbit skin glue! Now I am wondering if the glue was too strong or if there wasn’t enough chalk.
Do I have to trash the panels? What do you think? It is really a bummer after a weekend of working on them. Plus, even if I don’t see cracks in the others, I am wondering if they won’t crack in the future since it was the same batch.
Thanks, Amy
Amy,
I’m not sure what advice to give you, because this hasn’t happened to me. I don’t know of any way to fix a cracked gesso panel. If the others are OK after a month or so, I’d guess that they are most likely OK. I wouldn’t try to paint a masterpiece on them, however.
You may need to experiment with your glue recipe until you find one that works better. It sounds like it may have been too strong. I’ve always done fine with i part glue to 11 parts warm tap water by volume. Because glue batches vary in strength and can vary in volume depending on ambient humidity, however, it can take some work to find the right formula for you.
Good luck.
Here is another question to throw at you… I am trying to make a half chalk emulsion to put on wood panels where I have glued linen to them… The recipe is 100g rabbit skin glue to 1 litre of water soaked overnight, then 250g Whiting + 250 g zinc and I put 100 g stand oil….. I can’t get it to mix well…What a mess! I really don’t like oil primers and this was a recipe from and old friend (except he used boiled linseed which I cannot find) Have you tried this?
Amy
Amy,
I haven’t made half chalk grounds, but it’s my understanding that you need to create an emulsion by adding the oil to the glue a few drops at a time while mixing continuously (just like making mayonnaise). That might be difficult with undiluted stand oil because it is so thick. I’d probably try mixing the stand oil 50/50 with linseed oil.
Can you make gesso using liquid hide glue from a bottle (the kind for wood working)?
Christa,
I don’t know. I have neither tried it nor heard of other people using it for this purpose. If you do, please let me know how it works out.
Can i use a panel prepared in this manner for painting with watercolors and gold leaf?
Shitai,
As far as I know, watercolor should work fine, although I have not tried it. You might be able to get some very interesting effects.
All of those beautiful Italian 13th and 14th century paintings in tempera and gold leaf were done on gesso panels of the type described in this post. There are multiple traditional techniques, including water gilding, which uses hide glue to stick the leaf to the gesso. It’s tough to master, but the effect can be stunning.
hi David i’m planning on using this gesso recipe for the first time on some large canvases (for oil painting)..but do you know if this can cause problems if i have to re-stretch a finished painting at a later date? (for example, if the work needs to be rolled and shipped to another country to be re-stretched). Up until now i normally only use the size (two layers) and then just paint straight on top..and had no problems…but i’m sure i heard somewhere that it’s risky if gesso is applied as it can crack?
P.S, if its not suitable…do you know what might be the best option to get a smooth ground surface, thats flexible enough for large canvas? thanks
Jon,
Traditional glue-chalk gesso is too brittle for use on stretched canvas. You can glue canvas over a panel and gesso it. For oil painting on stretched canvas, the traditional preparation is to size with a thin layer of hide glue, then prime with lead white. That has worked very well for me. Natural Pigments makes a very good lead primer.
what is the cause of getting those small tiny bubbles in the gesso after starting drying?
Peter,
Those little bubbles are found in paintings going back to at least the 14th century. From what I have read and observed, they are simply caused by bubbles in the gesso. If you stir gently and are otherwise careful, I have not found that they happen very often. When they do, you can usually correct by letting the layer dry and adding another couple of layers.