Black Gesso

Hello Everyone !

Today I am sharing some experimentation with Black Gesso. A brand new pot has been sitting on my desk for over six months and for some reason wasn't calling me. Then when I was cleaning up the other day I found an old paintbrush which had been stained black and so decided to cover a tag with the black gesso and …… I was off!

There are no step by step photographs as I had no idea where this was going. But this is how my base tag ended up.

Once the gesso was dry I added some text through a stencil with Tim Holtz Texture Paste and once this had dried tried painting it directly with Luminarte Silks. They didn't want to stick to the gesso, so I covered the tag with Paper Artsy Fresco Finish Paint - just a light covering. At this point it nearly went into the bin! but I decided to spray it with sprays made from Luminarte Primary Elements: I used Rose Gold, Teal Zircon and Autumn Skies. I am so glad I didn't put it in the bin!

Finally I added some white embossing in the spaces.

Then I started looking for other substrates to try the black gesso on! This layered dragonfly had been cut in white cardstock. After a coat of gesso I applied the Primary Elements powders directly from the pot.

The same too for this die cut frame. The letter D is an old metal one which got gessoed, sprayed with the Autumn Skies and then daubed with white paint as it was a little bright. The flower was sprayed with the Rose Gold and the ribbon dyed with a combination of Autumn Skies, Teal Zircon and Go Navy Sprays.

I wish you could see how beautifully the colours shimmer and I am very pleased at how the different surfaces took the gesso and sprays quite differently. I shall definitely be using the Black Gesso again!

As I have used a number of random letters I thought my tag might qualify for the current challenge at the Artist Trading Post Exchange which is "Alphabet Soup". Such a great idea for a challenge to use up random letters left in our stash!