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Ant Holder

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Posted
Just been reading up on this, about adding Yellow Ochre to white gesso primer. But how much does one add?

Sylvia Evans

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As much as you want to tint the surface . It's your choice . I just blob it in and play till it get what I want. It can be any colour .

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by NorthLight

Peter Davison

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Posted
I use acrylic gesso tinted with ochre or raw sienna usually or, more occasionally burnt sienna and ultramarine, to get whatever ground colour I require. There is no set formula but mix to get the tint you want as a base. Incidentally I have also used white acrylic primer from the DIY store as a substitute for gesso and saved some pennies without any apparent detriment. I know I am not the first to do this. I also add some calcite (ground chalk) to the mix to produce a 'short' ground i.e. a base coat that is more absorbent but I work in oil so not sure if this works for acrylics. I know at least one person who uses Polyfilla instead of calcite without any problems. As with many things 'you pay your money and you take your chance'.

Ant Holder

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And it can be stored ok? I will be doing this in future.

Ant Holder

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Posted
By adding another colour to gesso primer, will this not affect the tooth?

Peter Davison

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I store it in an airtight jar and it keeps for weeks. So far the longest I have kept a mix would be about three months as I use it up bit by bit and then make another mix. It doesn't seem to affect the tooth but I put calcite in the mix anyway.
With Sarah, Phil, Ellen, Rose the dentist, and the granddaughter whose name I forget.

Robert Jones, NAPA

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It shouldn't have much effect if any on the 'tooth', a) because acrylic 'gesso' is only a preparation of Titanium White acrylic paint, b) because you don't need so much colour to make quite a difference to your gesso: in other words, there'll be far more white in the mix than the other colour and its properties will be retained. Of course, you can just lay down your gesso, let it dry - or not, it doesn't matter, just a somewhat different effect - and then add your yellow ochre, or burnt sienna or whatever, either as a form of glaze, or, if the white's still wet, to modify it to your desired tone.

Phil Kendall

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Posted
Robert, as ever is correct, acrylic gesso contains a lot of white titanium dioxide and it needs a significant amount of coloured paint to shift it in any meaningful way. So just paint a base layer over it if you must. The white gesso base does make an applied colour more vibrant. So do you really want soot & white wash, worse still khaki art?