Making Absorbant Gesso With Marble Dust

Is there a good recipe to make a pastel ground using marble dust.

Making absorbant gesso with marble dust.

I ve been looking for a diy recipe of gesso using marble dust and pva glue. Here s the recipe to make your own clear gesso. There are lots on youtube but generally so gagingly goofy i can t finish them. The most common use for marble dust in painting is creating traditional rabbit skin glue gesso a surface primer for paintings.

Marble dust is calcium carbonate dust used in painting. 10 pigment 90 whiting calcium carbonate gypsum and or marble dust the easiest way to get the percentage is to use 1 ounce pigment to 9 ounces whiting. This will help make the gesso spread more easily and reduce causing air bubbles. Add 1 teaspoon glycerin or honey and stir.

Traditional gesso is not flexible and so is not suitable to paint onto canvas. The flexing of the material will make the traditional gesso crack and flake. I ve gotten a bag of marble dust to try but it just comes out like really thick gesso. In addition to creating a painting primer you can also mix marble dust directly into your paints to create interesting textures and to fill your paints with body.

1 cup cheap white glue 1 4 cup water 4 to 5 heaping tablespoons of powdered marble or marble dust or marble. Mix 3 4 cup of solids. I bought a few cheepy canvases from michaels and want to smooth and stiffen them. Traditional artist s gesso is made by mixing whiting which is powdered chalk or marble dust with rabbit skin glue to form a base to paint onto.