Learn make gesso to use as a base for your paintings.
Make your own gesso with simple, inexpensive ingredients that you can find at the store or around the house. Gesso is used as a primer or "ground" for paintings on canvas to make the canvas stiff, or on other surfaces such as wood to even them out and to keep the paint from soaking in.
Whiting Ingredient
Gesso needs a "whiting" ingredient or inert pigment, which, of course, is what makes it white, and also what adds the fine texture, or "tooth" that gesso has. To add the whiting ingredient to your homemade gesso, grind up some white chalk under a heavy rolling pin on a clean, flat, non-porous surface. Grind up one piece of chalk at a time to make sure you get it as fine as possible. Collect the chalk powder into a container with a lid. You can also use talcum powder, ground plaster or gypsum.
Binding Agent
You also need an ingredient to make your gesso stick together and harden as it dries. Glues made from animals, such as fish glue, used to be used. There are other options for binding now that are cheaper and easier to find. Woodworking glue is ideal because it dries hard, making for a sturdy support. You can also use white acrylic paint as glue that dries hard and won't become liquid again once it has dried.
Mix Gesso
Mix the wet ingredients -- distilled water and binding agent -- together in glass jar with a lid. Make sure these ingredients are blended thoroughly before you begin adding the dry ingredient, the whiting ingredient, as if you were making batter for a cake. Fill the jar about half way to the top and mix until it has the consistency that is slightly thicker than water. Slowly add the whiting ingredient to the wet ingredients until the gesso has the consistency of paint. Keep a lid on the jar so the gesso doesn't dry out.
Egg Tempera Gesso
Since acrylic gesso isn't compatible to use with egg tempera paint, you will need to use different ingredients and take a different approach to making it if you are using tempera paints. Heat up some water and granules of "rabbit skin glue" in a double boiler, and keep a thermometer in the mixture to make sure the temperature doesn't exceed 135 degrees. Put the crushed white chalk into the mixture to make a paste, and allow the mixture to cool for 1 hour. Strain the mixture through an old pair of pantyhose. Allow it to cool to room temperature.
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