How to Use Gesso in Junk Journals!

Explore portals with a fun hack and learn about different types of gesso in Day 6 of Creative Daily Practice. Turning Dreamers Into Doers. Come play along in your junk journals, altered books, paper crafting. Mixed Media at its most fun. You won’t want to miss it. 

The first part of our tutorial today emphasizes the importance of just being your creative self as an artist. Everyone has unique abilities, perspective, and goals, and art is very subjective. “Let your creative soul fly,” then enjoy and thrive!

Gesso in Junk Journals

Now let’s look at the ways we can use gesso to our benefit. Gesso is really a sort of primer, used to prepare one surface to enable the use of another medium. Gesso is one of those things that you don’t want to ‘skimp’ on. Purchasing good quality ones is important for your artistic pursuits. Gesso comes in white, black, a version that can be sanded, and a clear (transparent) version. Gesso is an acrylic liquid that prepares a stable surface for acrylic and oil paints. If your goal is to have the words in the pages of a book to show through, clear gesso is the right choice. If you have layers and don’t want to cover them with other types of gesso, the clear type is also best.

We are using white gesso for our tutorial today. I like to use an older, gesso-specific brush when applying gesso. Dip your brush in the gesso jar, and use enough to cover your page. Do not dilute it. As you can see, the top part of the page where one gesso coat was used is not as opaque as the lower part, which has two applied layers. For adhesive purposes, only one layer is necessary. If your intent is to cover up a page, a white titanium paint is the better choice over gesso as it is specifically designed to do so. One coat of gesso along with one or two coats of titanium white is a great hack! Dry time for gesso typically is five to ten minutes. A hair dryer can also be used to dry faster.

May joy be with you all!

How can I serve YOU? How can I inspire YOUR creativity today? How can I help YOU? Learn about our Dreamer Into Doers 2020 Challenge. 20 minutes per day to develop and nurture a Personal Daily Creative Practice. There is Contagious Creativity awakening all around us. Come join the Contagious Creativity movement at https://www.facebook.com/Cre8Tiva/.