Gesso

Video Transcript

"As I mentioned before, because of the pores in the canvas you can see the paint, the gesso creates a surface like this where it fills in the pores, covers it smooth so when you paint you can just paint right over it. If you were just to paint on a regular canvas it would take a lot more paint and a lot more time because you wouldn't be able to cover a surface area without the paint getting really stuck in the pores. I am just going to show you right now so you won't have to make that mistake. Okay, so when you paint directly onto the canvas you see here it is not going on smoothly at all. There is a lot of paint right here, but it doesn't look like it. I have applied a whole bunch of paint to this area, but it is coming off like there is nothing there. If I used water it would fill in the pores, you can see, but you don't want to be using a whole bunch of water like that and it is a waste of painting. So, when you paint onto gesso canvas right here. Look at that, that is the same amount of paint that I put just right there and there is a lot of texture because there is a lot of paint still. You lose the texture in here and you only have the texture of the porous canvas, but on here you can see the strokes of your paint and it just goes on so much more smoother. Look at that. See, it makes a big difference."