Black Gesso

Oct 29, 2012 11:02

Usually I work from a black undercoat and I've been using cheap matt black spray paints for this. This has two significant downsides:

Firstly, due to prevailing weather conditions it's not possible to prime outdoors for most part of the year. Priming indoors is both messy and smelly. I have a separate hobby room so I can live with the mess but I really don't have any more brain cells to sacrifice to solvent fumes, so priming has to be the last thing I do in a painting night. The ventilation just isn't good enough for me to stay and paint something else after priming (or varnishing for that matter).

Secondly, no matter how hard I try to turn the mini around when spraying, I always end up missing some spot. So I have to spend some time touching up the undercoat with black paint essentially making priming a two-stage process.

Yeah, I could undercoat with regular black paint too, but that has to thinned to right consistency and priming large models with it can use up those not too cheap small jars pretty quickly.

Enter gesso. Gesso is a chalky substance used by "real" painters to prepare the canvas. In essence, it's a primer. Actually, the acrylic gesso sold in art stores these days is not a real gesso at all because it doesn't contain glue make from rabbit bones or whatnot, but it's still called gesso. I've used gesso in the past, but usually it is white. I knew black gesso was supposed to exist, but it took some time to find a store that actually sells it.

Initial Impressions

Black Gesso Gesso is usually sold in largish jars. It's not free, but it is much cheaper than buying a similar volume of Chaos Black, or whatever they call black these days. I think I paid 15 euros for that jar in the picture.

It does seem very thick, but don't let that fool you.

In Use

Gesso is ready to use straight from the jar. You can thin it with water, but there's really no need. You can just slap it on with a large brush. It may seem thick but it has been designed for this use. It will "shrink" when it dries, hugging the figure nicely as long as you don't leave huge pools.

Painting on top of gesso is a joy. Unlike generic black paints, it's been designed to be a primer. The surface is very matt and grabs paint nicely.

If you like painting on white undercoat, white gesso works too. There is just one caveat: If you like to wash your primed figure to better show the contours, this does not really work. Gesso is porous and will just suck up your ink wash.

Verdict

Black Gesso This stuff is super cool! I see no reason to prime with spray paints anymore. Here's a couple gesso-primed figures in the picture (you can tell because the base wasn't primed by the overspray...)


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