Exactly what the heck Is Gesso? Gesso is one of those words that seems to stop beginner digital artists in their tracks. It leaves many people wondering how to use it, or if there’s even a need to use it at all.

Historically, gesso (pronounced ‘jesso‘) was made for oil painting and was traditionally used to prepare or prime a surface so oil paint would adhere to it. It is made from a combination of paint pigment, chalk and binder. Gesso would protect the canvas fibers, provide a nice surface to work on and give a little flexibility so the canvas wouldn’t crack if it was rolled. Traditional oil gesso could be described as more of a “glue gesso”.

Clearly, when it comes to digital art…“Modern Gesso” is anything but glue 😉 If you’ve been working in the digital scrapbooking world for any time at all I’d guess you’ve likely seen gesso at some of the shops you frequent. Sometimes you’ll see a kit that includes something called Impasto. I call that Gesso’s cousin. It’s very similar but often not quite as textured…if you get my drift!

You can find gesso paper, gesso brushes, & even some gesso styles. Perhaps you’ve already played with some of these. If so, I’m happy you already have some experience with gesso. I know a lot of people don’t have a clue about all the things we can do with gesso today.

One thing that isn’t talked about much in the digital world is how to create your own gesso. There certainly isn’t a recipe like what the “old time” painters would use to create a primer. But there is still a modern-day “recipe” and I’m going to share that with you today.

Creating Gesso Textures

Just a quick reminder before I get started…I use the current version of Photoshop Elements (PSE – 2024). So, everything I show you was accomplished using that software.

If you don’t already have some gesso images, brushes or styles, don’t worry. All you really need to create your own gesso textures are some good paint brushes and a bevel style.

The image directly above is a sample of some gesso textures I’ll be creating today using a variety of brushes.

I found some lovely brushes at my favorite free brush site – Brusheezy. There are four brush sets that provide interesting options when creating gesso textures. You can either click the brush set image or name to find it at Brusheezy:

20 Painter Brushes: This set contains just what it says…20 different paint brushes. Each paint brush is set to 2500 pixels (px). You can make the brush size smaller but you cannot increase it beyond the set maximum.

Free Paint Photoshop Brushes 6: This set contains 15 different paint brushes all set to 2500px. You can make the brush size smaller but you cannot increase it beyond the set maximum.

Free Smoke Photoshop Brushes 6: This set contains 15 different brushes all set to 2500px. You can make the brush size smaller but you cannot increase it beyond the set maximum.

Powder Photoshop Brushes 14: This set contains 15 different brushes all set to 2500px. You can make the brush size smaller but you cannot increase it beyond the set maximum.

Out of these four brush sets I’ll only be working with brushes from the “20 Painter Brushes” set today. I’ll work with some of the other brush sets during next week’s post when we’ll play a bit more with gesso.

Now let’s get started making some gesso textures…

Open A New File & Load Brushes

First, I’m going to open a blank 12×12 file in PSE. I’m going to immediately rename the initial blank layer from Layer 1 to “Base – Storing Bevel Settings”. This will make sense later. Next, I’m going to add a new layer, fill it with a grey color (I used #c6c4c4) so I can more easily see my brush when I create it and then name it, in my case Grey Layer. If you’re following along you can use any color you choose. Now I’m ready to create my first texture.

Note: If you don’t plan to save any of your work in a PSD file, you can ignore the part about renaming the initial blank layer from Layer 1 to “Base – Storing Bevel Settings”.

I will be creating each texture at its full size and on its own layer. I do this so I can manipulate each texture independently, making it larger or smaller as needed. And with it on its own layer I will also be able to rotate or even warp it if I choose.

I’m going to start with a brush out of the “20 Painter Brushes” set. With my brush set loaded, I create a new layer (PSE default name is Layer 1 – unless the original Layer 1 wasn’t renamed) above the Grey Layer and select the brush tool and set my brush to the first brush in the set “Painter 1”:

The number under the brush thumbnail indicates the size in pixels. In this case, all the brushes are saved at 2500px. Depending on the orientation of the brush this means it is either 2500px wide or 2500px high. Again, in this case each brush is oriented horizontally so that means the widest any brush can be is 2500px.

In order to identify the name of the actual brush, all I have to do is hover over the brush and PSE will display the actual name (or simply a number) of the brush. The naming convention for the brushes in this set is Painter #, where the # is replaced by the brush order in sequence from 1-20.

Because I’m creating gesso textures, I want them to be white. Since my foreground and background color chips are set at the default, all I have to do is press “X” and PSE will reverse the foreground to the background making the foreground color white.

Now with Layer 1 active I position my cursor near the center of my file and click:

I know this doesn’t look very textured at this point. I’ll fix that later. I’m going to rename Layer 1 to reflect the name of the brush. I name it “Layer 1 – 20 Painter Brushes Painter 1”. I know this is a long name but I’m going to be happy later as I’ll always know what brush from what brush set was used.

Note: Anytime you are creating a brush image in your file please be very careful that the entire brush is contained within the dimensions of your file. Regardless of the fact that the brush is on its own layer, if any part of the brush goes “outside the lines” it will show up as truncated (cut off) when you move it back onto the “background”; like this:

For now, I’m going to save the correctly placed brush as it is. First, I’m going to crop the file to size being very careful to include every bit of the brush plus some “breathing room”. Don’t panic, I’ll undo the cropping as soon as I’ve saved the “brush”.

Could I have started with a smaller file size in the beginning because I knew the maximum brush size would be 2500? Yes, but that won’t always be the case. And if the brush is 2500px wide I don’t really know what the actual height might be, other than the maximum it could be is 2500px. So, one way or another some cropping will be involved. I guess it’s just a silly habit of mine to always start with a 12×12 file.

Next, I hide the Grey Layer and save the “brush” as a PNG file. When I save the brush, I name it “20PainterBrushes-Painter1”. Again, this is so I will always know which brush set/brush that I used to create this PNG.

With the first “brush” saved I go on to do the same thing for the remaining brushes. I won’t bore you with the details. Just know that I continued the naming practices for Layers & PNG files until I ended up with “Layer 20 – 20 Painter Brushes Painter 20” and PNG “20PainterBrushes-Painter20”.

I know you’re probably wondering why I would keep all these layers if I’ve saved the individual PNG files. The reason is I know I’m going to be changing those PNG files and I want to retain the original “brush” images for future use. I ended up saving all these layers in a PSD file so I have them any time I may need to go back to the originals. You certainly don’t have to do that. As a matter of fact, I’m certain most people would only save the PNG files. This is where my OCD tendencies tend to rear their ugly head!!!

So, I now have 20 brush images saved and I can begin creating my textures. I’ll probably only use a few of those PNG files to show you how to proceed with creating textures. We certainly don’t need to turn all 20 PNG files into textures right now 😊

Note: It’s always best to create your textures in a large size since it will lose definition if it is scaled up.

Adding The Texture

The image at the top of this section was made using that vintage paper I made for you a few weeks ago in my Old Vintage Paper post and four of the brushes from “20PainterBrushes”. Did you notice how those brushes no longer look flat? That’s because I added a bevel style to them. That’s what gave them the texture you might expect to see with gesso.

Now I’m going to show you how to add that bevel. I’m going back to my Grey Layer. Since I’m still in my original PSD file I can easily access any one of the brushes that I created earlier. For that sample above I used the Painter 2, Painter 3, Painter 7 & Painter 9 brushes. Of those brushes, I think I like how Painter 3 really lets us see the best variance in texture. So, I’m going to use that one now:

I’m also now going to make it larger and change its orientation:

Remember, if this brush hadn’t been created on its own layer (or saved as a PNG), I wouldn’t be able to do that.

Now it’s time to play with some bevels. I’m going to be using the PSE bevel styles that come with the software. If you have other bevel styles…you’re more than welcome to experiment with those. I quickly stepped through the different “default” bevels/settings so I could show you what they look like:

Note: All of these bevels were created using the PSE default settings of Lighting Angle = 90 degrees, Size = 21 & Direction = Up. The Simple Sharp Inner bevel had no noticeable effect at the default settings so it is not shown in the image above.

Some of those might be hard to see as the images are rather small. But it should give you at least a bit of an idea how the bevel will change the brush.

I’m not particularly thrilled with the last two options (Simple Sharp Outer & Simple Sharp Pillow Emboss) so I will not include them in the next set.

That said, I quickly stepped through and modified the different settings on the remaining bevel options to show you what they look like:

Note: As with the default settings, the Simple Sharp Inner bevel had no noticeable effect even after changing the settings so it is not shown in the image above. This doesn’t mean that particular bevel won’t work on a different “brush”. I’d encourage you to experiment on your own to see if you get different results.

Changing the Lighting Angle did show a noticeable difference on each brush. In my opinion, changing this setting is best left to personal preference. It really just depends on how “steep” a texture you want to create. PSE defaults most often to a Lighting Angle of 90 degrees. I prefer 120 degrees so I did use that for all of the examples above.

The Size setting is also one that can change based on a personal preference basis. As noted in the image directly above, I used a Size of 40 for all of the examples.

I have to admit that initially, I felt that changing the Direction from up to down sort of had a negative impact. To me it seemed that on each brush it appeared I’d lost some of the “raised effect”. You too may have expected that since we were going from Up to Down. But after taking a second look, that really wasn’t the case at all. What the change in Direction did do was alter the “orientation” of the bevel simply making the texture look distinctly different. Like this:

You can certainly play with the Direction setting on your own and on a case-by-case basis to see what you like best. Nothing says each gesso texture has to look identical…goodness knows if I were using real gesso on real canvas, things could look different with each stroke of the gesso. I could definitely make a case for creating textured brushes using both the Up & Down Direction.

As I was going through creating the sample gesso textures shown above, I did save each of them (yes, even those with the default settings) as an independent PNG file cropped to an appropriate size. I used a naming convention for these PNGs that reflected the actual brush name, style name & style settings. Here’s what my gesso texture names look like: “20PainterBrushes-Painter#-BevelSimple Emboss-120-40 Up” & “20PainterBrushes-Painter#-BevelSimple EmbossDefaults-90-21 Up”, where the # symbol is replaced by the actual “brush” number from within that set of brushes. I know these names are long but I’ll always know how each gesso texture was created! And I now have 40 gesso textures saved for future use…how fun is that?!?

A funny aside here…I “grew up” working in the computer industry. Way back in the “dark ages” (the 1980s) when I first got started, we were limited on how many characters file names could contain. Back then we could only use 8 characters! Clearly my current naming convention methodology wouldn’t have worked back then. I’m sure you can imagine how thrilled (as a Type-A, borderline OCD personality) I am that we have this flexibility today 😉

Before moving on I have one other item of note. Remember waaaaay back at the beginning I mentioned that I renamed the initial blank layer for my file to “Base – Storing Bevel Settings”. Well once I settle on the bevel style/settings that I like the best I’m going to store that style on that blank layer. That way I can just copy it to any other brush as needed. If you aren’t as OCD as I, and have no plans to keep the PSD file for future work then you can skip past the next few paragraphs and go right to the “Adding Color” section.

As you may have guessed, I was happy with the bevel settings I used on that second set of examples above. And out of all the bevels I liked the Simple Emboss the best. So those are the style & settings I saved on that blank Base layer. To ensure those settings don’t change on that base layer I click the Lock icon at the top of the Layers Panel:

In PSE, clicking the Lock icon in the Layers panel is “supposed to” lock all of layer’s properties. You can unlock the layer by clicking the icon again. Don’t confuse this with the icon directly to the right of the Lock Icon. That is the “Lock Transparency” icon (see what looks like a block of “empty” pixels behind the little lock?). Clicking that icon will lock only the transparent areas of the layer, so that no editing (specifically painting) occurs in them.

MAJOR NOTE: Above I said PSE is “supposed to” lock all layer properties. Unfortunately, there is one property that cannot currently be locked within PSE…Lighting Angles! Please be aware, if you start using any other layer styles with different settings (specifically any with the Lighting Angle setting) you will not be able to preserve the Lighting Angle setting even on the locked Base layer. Locking of the Lighting Angle is only available in the full version of Photoshop.

Since the Lighting Angle setting is the only one that won’t be saved (even when locked) I’m still going to copy my “favorite” style settings to the “Base – Storing Bevel Settings” layer. In this way I can at least store the actual bevel style selected (in my case the Simple Emboss Bevel), and all other style settings. For me, that alone is worth having this layer. I am going to “go the extra mile” and save the bevel name and all setting values within that base layer name. That way in the future, should I start monkeying around with other styles within this PSD file, I’ll always know what the Lighting Angle was (should be) for this particular set of gesso images & can adjust the Lighting Angle accordingly. My blank “base” layer name now reads as “Base – Storing Bevel Settings -SimpleEmboss-120-40-Up”.

Adding Color

Not all gesso has to be white so now it’s time to talk about ways to color the gesso. As with most other elements/images there are multiple ways to do this. The simplest way is to use the re-color option I discussed back in February of 2023 in my post about Enhancing Your Stash.

I just set the foreground color to the color I want to use. For now, I’m going to use a nice shade of purple (#8514d4). I then go to the top tool bar and select Enhance->Adjust Color->Adjust Hue/Saturation (Ctrl+U). PSE opens the Hue/Saturation dialog box.

At this point I’m just going to check the “Colorize” box in the lower right corner of that dialog box. You can see that I’ve already adjusted the settings (other than Hue) to get the desired look. Take note, the Lightness level is set to a negative number. That’s because I’m trying to colorize a white image! So don’t be scared when you first try this method and it looks like it’s not working. Just move that Lightness slider to the left until you start to see it change.

With the desired look achieved I simply click OK and here’s the result:

But what if I want that gesso to have a multi-color look to it? That too is fairly easy. I have a whole bunch of alcohol ink and watercolor papers that I’ve amassed over the years. Some are from Creative Fabrica. Like this one from the “Alcohol Ink Backgrounds – Digital Papers” pack by the designer Artistic Revolution:

This kind of paper should work great for this next step. And it’s only one out of 100 included in this pack! So, I bring this paper into my file and layer it over the textured gesso brush. With that done all I have to do is clip it to the gesso image and voila:

WOW…how pretty is that?!? And of course, I could have rotated or resized that paper to get different results. But I love it just as is! And as you may have already guessed, yes…I did apply this paper to every single one of my gesso textures and saved them with the paper name included in the file name (“20PainterBrushes-Painter#-BevelSimple Emboss-120-40 Up-Clipped AlcoholInkWatercolorTexture 66”! 40 more fun gesso brushes for later use!

Note: If you’re new to digital scrapping, the blog or to PSE and aren’t sure how to “clip” paper, please refer back to my February 7, 2023 post about Enhancing Your Stash. There you’ll find an explanation on how to “clip” paper to your image.

The only thing I’d caution you on regarding clipping paper to a gesso texture is not to use a paper that is also textured. It could give an unnatural look to the gesso, like this:

I zoomed in quite a bit so you could hopefully see what I meant about the unnatural look brought about using a textured paper. Gesso definitely should not (or at least not normally) have a woven or fabric texture to it. The piece of paper I used on the above example was from a dyed muslin paper pack:

This is from the “Beige Green Eco Dyed Muslin Cloth Linen” pack at Creative Fabrica.

Definitely not a good look! But having said that there are some textured papers that might work well. Anything that looks like “chunky” paint or “rough” leather can produce interesting results. I have examples using these three papers:

Here are the results…

With the Colorful Grunge Texture:

With the Grunge Leather Blush Peach Cowgirl:

With the Colorful Acrylic Painting:

So, you see…some textures can work. But I still want you to be careful not to clip a paper that may make the gesso look unnatural. You need to remember that true gesso starts out as a somewhat “liquid” or paste-like medium and generally won’t have a texture that is not consistent with that medium. I hope that makes sense!

Now, there is at least one other way to get color onto that gesso texture. I can apply a gradient layer. With the “brush” layer active in the layers panel, I create a new layer above it. I then open the Gradient Tool:

I can then just select the type of gradient I want to use and the “direction” of the gradient. I chose the Copper gradient and Radial:

Then I can just “drag” a line from top to bottom, left to right or diagonally across my file (I chose left to right) and PSE fills the new layer with the gradient:

All that’s left is for me to clip this new gradient layer to the “brush”. And this is the result:

Not bad but I think I like the alcohol ink option the best.

Creating Custom Gesso Brushes

If you don’t have any brushes or just aren’t sure about how to use the ones you have, you can always create your own. I know, I know…that sounds daunting right? Well, it isn’t as hard as it may sound. One of the easiest ways to create an interesting brush is to “pull” a texture from an existing image/paper.

I have an image that contains real gesso applied to a real canvas surface:

I want to create a brush that will replicate this texture. To do that all I have to do is pull that image into PSE. I then select the Lasso tool:

I can then “draw” a selection around the areas of the texture I want to be in the brush:

Note: if you need pointers on making selections refer back to my March 5, 2024 post about Making The Right Selection.

With the selection made all I have to do is go to the top tool bar and select Edit->Define Brush.

Note: Depending on your version of PSE the option may be Define Brush from Selection.

PSE then opens a dialog box for me to name the brush:

The default name is Sampled Brush 1. I did change it to Sampled Gesso Brush 1 and clicked OK. By default, PSE will add this brush to whichever brush set I last used. In my case it was the “20 Painter Brushes” I had used earlier:

You can see that the brush was added to the end of that brush set and reflects the brush’s height (length) in pixels. And as I hover over the brush, PSE will display the name I gave to that brush.

By default, PSE will always add a newly created brush to whatever brush set is active when I define it (typically the set used last). Not the ideal place to save a custom brush.

I don’t want my brushes attached to some other brush set. If I ever need to re-install my software, any custom brushes won’t be saved. To preserve my custom brushes, I must create a new brush set that I can keep even if I need to re-install my software.

So, I go to the top tool bar and select Edit->Preset Manager. PSE opens the Preset Manger with my active brush set visible:

I have my new brush selected and it is highlighted with a light blue outline (at least in my version of PSE). Only selected brushes will be saved to my new set. To include more brushes, I can hold the Shift key as I make other selections. I don’t need to do that this time.

I simply click the Save Set button. PSE opens a Save As Dialog box:

For me PSE opens the last folder I accessed when loading brushes. I keep all of my brushes in one place (a dedicated folder on my computer’s hard drive) so they’re easy to find when I want to load a new one. I’m not at all certain what the “default” folder might be if you try to save a brush set.

As you can see, I named my brush set “MyCustomGessoBrushes”. I clicked Save and PSE returned me to the Preset Manage dialog box. Since I know I have saved this gesso brush to a custom set, I ensure that this new gesso brush is still selected (highlighted) and click the Delete button. This will remove it from the “20 Painter Brushes” set where it was initially saved. I can then click the Done button & PSE closes the dialog box and returns me to my active file.

With the brush tool active I can now click on the down arrow next to the Brush (word & image) in the options panel to open the Brush Preset Picker:

When I click that down arrow, I can see that the new gesso brush I created has in fact been removed from the “20 Painter Brushes” set:

I can now click on the three dots in the upper right corner of the Preset Picker window and select Load Brushes:

Because I had previously made changes to the current (20 Painter Brushes) brush set PSE displays a warning dialog box asking if I want to save the changes to the current brushes:

Since I know the new brush is in its own set, I can click No. PSE then opens the folder in which I saved my new custom brush set:

Because I sort that folder by date last modified, my new brush set is right at the top and I can select that and click Load. PSE returns me to the Preset Picker window and my custom gesso bush set is loaded:

I can now use that brush to add textures to a multitude of things. Here’s what it looks like simply “stamped” (foreground color set to white) on the grey background I’ve been using:

And, that brush is what I used to create the pink gesso image shown at the top of this section.

Since I only had the one brush selected, this new set will initially contain only this one brush. But I can always add more gesso brushes to this set at a later time. All I have to do is load/open the custom set before I define any new brush(es), then just save the brush set again after adding to it.

Note: You can rename and delete brushes by right-clicking a thumbnail in the brushes Preset Picker window.

A Brief PSA

Disclaimer: I am in no way being compensated for the following comments. This is merely my personal experience and observations. I can’t imagine doing what I do every day without ready access to the resources available to me every single day and at such an amazing dollar value.

I know I’ve been talking a lot about Creative Fabrica in this post. I apologize for not mentioning sooner that the items I’ve highlighted here are not free. You can purchase any item at any time for the “going rate”. But I want to tell you a little secret…if you get a subscription, you can download anything anytime.

They have four different subscription plans: Crafts, Fonts, Graphics & All-Access. The Crafts subscription covers things like SVG and other “cut files” (currently $12 @ month). The Fonts subscription…self-explanatory (currently $19 @ month). And the Graphics subscription includes all other graphic images including papers, transfers, borders, paint, digital asset kits…anything that isn’t a font or “craft” type file (currently $19 @ month). The all-access Subscription is again self-explanatory but also includes embroidery designs (currently $29 @ month). With All-Access, you can download anything! And it all comes with a Commercial license regardless of which subscription you choose!!!!

I got my first subscription back in 2022 when they were running an amazing deal around the Black Friday “season”. I got an All-Access subscription for a total price of somewhere around $60 for the WHOLE YEAR. That works out to about $5 a month.

I have one rule about buying supplies…if something costs $60, I have to be able to use it at least 60 times to be worth the expense. I can guarantee you that I got my money’s worth out of that $60 purchase by at least tenfold. And every year since, I’ve been able to tack on another year to my subscription at an even further discount…the last 2 renewals were for a mere $47 dollars a year.

These days you can’t buy 10 basic scrapbooking kits for less than $50 (outside of $2 Tuesdays). An All-Access subscription gives you access to more than 160,00 fonts with new ones added daily, 8.9 million graphics, again more added daily. I know even at $60 a year this is a great bargain. Even if you only download 100 items you get more than your money’s worth. And right now, you can get a yearly ALL ACCESS subscription for just $3.99/month billed at $47/year (normal price would be $348).

Looking at only the assets I’ve mentioned in this post, I would have spent more than $58 if I hadn’t had a subscription. Truth be told…I likely wouldn’t have even downloaded that one pack of 100 Alcohol Ink Backgrounds at all ($40 bought without a subscription)! Sorry for the “commercial” on Creative Fabrica. Working on this post really drove home for me the value I’ve gained by having a subscription.

And even if you’re not interested in a subscription, they always have three FREE GIFTS every single day. One of which is always a font. So at least check them out for that! And they do seem to have good deals fairly regularly.

More Tips On Gesso

Remember…gesso can be one of your best friends when it comes to creating interesting textures!

Be sure to create your textures in a large size since they could lose definition if scaled up.

Shadows can also be added to your textured brush to help accentuate the texture even more. Just be careful that you don’t make the brush end up looking like it’s “floating”.

Keep in mind that real gesso starts out as a somewhat “liquid” or paste-like medium. So, any digital gesso we create generally shouldn’t have a texture inconsistent with that medium.

And think about this…you can use clip art, fonts, textures, or any other graphical assets you can think of to create a custom brush.

Generally speaking, it’s best to create your brushes in as large a size as possible since the brush can lose definition if it is scaled up.

When you define a brush the size of the area being used to create the brush in PSE (a selection within the image, the whole image, etc.) cannot be larger than 2500px in any direction. If you go over this limit, the Define Brush command will be grayed out.

If you select a portion of an item to create a brush and “Define Brush” is not an option, your image size is too large to make a brush. Just reduce the size of the image and “Define Brush” should become an option.

As with all of your digital supplies, always be sure to keep a back up of any custom brush sets you create.

As always, if you have any questions or want to make a suggestion about a topic you’d like me to cover, please don’t ever hesitate to “Message Me”.

Thanks for reading this week’s Tuesday Tip. Be sure to check back next week for some fun tips on using creating gesso paper with your new gesso textures. If you want to stay informed about new posts, just click “Follow Me” to stay in touch. I hope you have a wonderful week!