In this instructional video, Christie Renee Hawkins of The Social Easel explains what gesso is, when it’s needed, and how to apply it to both new and previously painted canvases. She clarifies that most store‑bought canvases come pre‑gessoed, but hand‑stretched or non‑gessoed surfaces require a coating to prevent paint from soaking through. Hawkins demonstrates reusing old, unfinished paintings by covering them with Liquitex Basic Acrylic Gesso, describing a simple, liberal brush‑on method, brush choices, and the option for multiple layers. She emphasizes letting each coat dry before adding another, notes that any ordinary brush will work, and hints at using gesso for texture in future projects. The video serves as a practical, beginner‑friendly guide to preparing canvases and extending the life of existing artwork.
Chapters
Hey, it's Christie with The Social Easel, and I wanted to do a new little video for you showing you how to use gesso. I get this question a lot. People always ask me if they have to gesso their canvases before they get started, and the short answer is no. Most of the canvases that you buy in the value packs at stores, at Michaels, Hobby Lobby, they are already pre-gessoed. If you are doing a hand-stretched canvas or a non-gessoed canvas, then you would need to gesso it. And basically what that means is you're covering the surface of the canvas so that the paint does not soak through. Gesso creates that barrier. But one of the other reasons I love gesso and why it's important to have is that you can use it to paint over old paintings that maybe you started and they just didn't turn out the way you wanted them to, and you don't want to waste that canvas. I have a stack of them that has been accumulating over the years of like ideas I played with and then it didn't work out and I shelved it. Well, I never took the time to go back and gesso those, and I had some time today and that is what I was doing. And I thought I'm going to show you guys how simple and easy this is. So, um, if you have, like I said, extra canvases laying around, um, and you don't want to waste them, this is how you can reuse them. So So this is just very long time ago. I was playing with donuts that I was going to do for a kid's painting that I never did. And then this one, I was just using this to kind of play around with some different shapes and stuff. So for both of those, I don't want to do either one of those ideas anymore. So I am just going to take some gesso. You can get whatever brand you want. This is Liquitex Basic Acrylic Gesso, and it even comes in different colors. I always just use white. Because I'll paint on anything else that I want to on there. So you want to liberally apply. I'm gonna do— and you don't have to do it this way, you can put some on a plate if you want to, if you'd rather do it that way. I just squeeze it right on to the canvas and then I'm just going to start brushing in that gesso, and it is creating a barrier that is going to cover up that previous painting so that it won't be peeking through when I decide to use this for something else. So with acrylic, you hear me say it all the time that you can always just paint over everything, But sometimes a nice layer of gesso is just good for you to— I think of it like an eraser. It's just erasing your canvas and giving you a fresh start. So I'm just going to brush that on. And sometimes, depending on the painting, you may want to do multiple layers. I don't think that's really necessary for this one. I think that's going to be enough. Coverage that once I start adding the paint on, you'll not be able to see what was originally behind that. So you can barely see the silhouette of those donuts now. And I'm just using, um, just a nice big brush. This is 2 inches. Um, like really any kind of like chip brush or anything like that you can get from Walmart, the Dollar Tree, craft store. This doesn't need to be any kind of special brush. Brushes that you would use to paint around your house are just fine. I keep all our old brushes and they're just good to use for prepping surfaces. So that is it. That is how you, um, gesso a canvas to have nice new fresh canvases to paint with. So I hope that was a helpful tip. If you've got some canvases at home that you know you need to do that with, hopefully that little tip helps you. And like I said, once it dries, if you feel like it needs another layer, you can definitely do that, but you want to let it dry in between coats depending on what, what painting you had behind that. Another idea that you can do once you gesso it is add texture to your painting as well, and that's just going to create another layer of separation in the canvas and really create some cool texture for you to play with in your paintings as well, but we'll save that one for another video.
