Subscribe to 👉 @dorisroseart for more art tips!

If you use acrylic gesso how long do you wait for it to dry before painting on top? Make sure you're waiting long enough after gessoing before applying oil or alkyd paints! Let the last layer dry for a minimum of 2 weeks and ideally a month to ensure maximum adhesion.

Acrylic paints take even longer than acrylic gesso to fully dry and cure, and your environment can affect drying time. If you use acrylics or are just in between layers of gesso you need not worry about waiting for gesso to fully cure as the paint still curing/shrinking & evaporating water will not impact your paint.

In this video I primed the wood panel with the reccomended 3 layers of acrylic gesso. Then, as I did a pencil underdrawing, I applied an additional layer of clear gesso (which is more absorbent than regular) to seal in the underdrawing. So before I started my first stage of my oil painting I put the work aside for over 2 weeks to let the last layer of acrylic primer dry.

Let me know in the comments how long you wait for you’re gesso to dry or if you buy pre-primed canvases instead. Happy painting!

—

For those who want to know more 👇 Below is a quote from the department of art conservation at the University of Delaware. If you google ‘how long does gesso take to dry’ you will find inconsistent & incorrect advice so I went straight to the source & the science. 😝

"Even though acrylic grounds/paints appear to dry within 24 hours, moisture continues to evaporate from these materials over an approximate 30-day period … waiting longer after applying acrylic gesso can only help that film fully dry and acquire more of its final, long-term traits….while two-weeks is our usual recommendation … a month is even better…”

“once the water evaporates and the polymers are pushed together, they begin a process called coalescing … It is that process that continues for quite some time - certainly out to a month or more … at least for us at Golden, 2 weeks is a good practical timeframe to aim for, with a month being more of an ideal.”

“…acrylics are alkaline in their wet state - and contain a small amount of ammonia - so until the majority of the moisture has evaporated the canvas surface could still be alkaline as well. Alkalinity, in turn, can cause the fatty acids in the oil to saponify, which could also impact adhesion. …we generally prefer giving the surface extra time to fully dry and be truly pH neutral… I would say do not paint on any water-based coating if the surface still feels cool or clammy, as that would clearly indicate a good deal of evaporation is still taking place.”

свернуть