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Gesso is traditionally a mix of an animal glue binder (usually rabbit-skin glue), chalk, and white pigment. For priming flexible canvas, an emulsion of gesso and linseed oil, also called "half-chalk ground", is used. [4] Acrylic gesso is a mixture of white pigment and some kind of filler (chalk, silica, etc.) and acrylic resin dispersed in water.
A detail of a self-portrait by Rembrandt.Three scratches in the center reveal the reddish ground. In visual arts, the ground (sometimes called a primer) is a prepared surface that covers the support of the picture (e.g., a canvas or a panel) and underlies the actual painting (the colors are overlaid onto the ground).
A canvas sized with rabbit-skin glue can be made tighter than with other alternatives—such as an acrylic-based gesso—because of the shrinkage. This type of canvas is also valuable because it can be sanded to a flatter texture, which allows the painter to achieve a finer level of detail than can be achieved with a typical acrylic gesso ground.
Acrylic gesso is very difficult to sand. One manufacturer makes a "sandable" acrylic gesso, but it is intended for panels only and not canvas. It is possible to make the gesso a particular color, but most store-bought gesso is white. The gesso layer, depending on its thickness, will tend to draw the oil paint into the porous surface.
Canvas took over from panel in Italy by the first half of the 16th century, a change led by Mantegna and the artists of Venice (which made the finest canvas at this point, for sails). In the Netherlands the change took about a century longer, and panel paintings remained common, especially in Northern Europe, even after the cheaper and more ...
However, since the 14th century, silverpoint was used more successfully on prepared supports. A traditional ground may be prepared with a rabbit skin glue solution pigmented with bone ash, chalk and/or lead white. Contemporary grounds include acrylic gesso, gouache and commercially prepared claycoat papers. The slight tooth of the ground ...