April ~ Playing with quotes and gesso

Playing with gesso (black and white)

Sometimes, you want a simple colour palette so your quote will stand out. I like to paint over old books with a gesso wash (50% gesso + 50% water). I use old Reader’s Digests (or other rescued books).

When the gesso is dry, I sometimes turn the page upside down so the text is unreadable, but I can use the faint lines of text underneath to keep my writing straight. My usual “go to” pen for writing on a white gesso wash is an ultrafine Sharpie. I use a template for the circles, but you can also use any flat circular lid or object you can find. The circle below was drawn around a roll of tape.

I also paint text pages with black gesso and write my quotes in white pencil crayon or white gel pen on the black gesso and it looks like a blackboard ~ very cool (and cheap!) effect.

What's gesso? Gesso is a primer used by artists to prepare the surface they’re working on, traditionally canvas.

It’s a mixture of white pigment (usually acrylic these days) plus a binder (glue) and chalk or plaster. It provides a “tooth”, or rough surface for the top pigments to adhere to. It also stabilizes the substrate (canvas), giving it flexibility, helping it to last longer, and it keeps paint from sinking into the paper and looking “lost”.

For our purposes, it hides (or partially hides) what was originally printed on the pages of the old book pages we’ll be using and gives us an rough texture to write (or rubber stamp) on. It receives marks of almost all types well.

Gesso is a staple of all kinds of art and it’s available in most art supply stores ~ definitely worth it.

This is one of my favourite journal pages I’ve done. Part of what makes it special to me is how much I didn’t plan ahead ~ including the lettering!

I had the quote by Francis Bacon rumbling around in my head and I didn't want to lose it. There were a LOT of words and I worried they wouldn’t fit, but I kept going anyway and luckily they did.

The image was a random image from a magazine, chosen because it was black and white (I was working in my black and white journal), and I didn't even see the heat coming the hand until after I drew what I later realized was a snowflake.

It’s magical to me that my subconscious brain was seeing things my conscious mind had missed.