Liquitex Professional Gesso Surface Prep Medium, 473ml (16-oz), Clear

Goes on white. Dries clear. Easy to paint on.

Makes acrylic painting better.

Nice basic white paint that dries quick, used for clay.

Its far too expensive but absolutely necessary for paint pouring. So use it frugally. It really does help with a base for the paint on the canvas. Ya gotta have it. Liquitex is the best!

This is the first Gesso I've used, so I can't compare it to other brands. I used this on an adult coloring book to prepare the paper for wet mediums. I painted it on a few test pages and let it dry (didn't take long but I live in a warm climate). The page feels rough, almost like a sand paper feel, it definitely added tooth to the paper. It also slightly changed the color of the paper, it's a little more off-white now. I tested the following mediums on top of the clear Gesso:Prismacolor color pencils: Worked really well. Was able to apply a lot of water and blend. I could even go in after the watercolor was dry with more water and re-work it. Was able to use lots of water without destroying the non-watercolor paper.Koi Watercolors: Same as the watercolor pencils, as far as how it behaved.Several types of colored pencils: Didn't work well, I'm not a fan of using pencils over the Gesso. The lines were rougher and hard to blend and control. They created a lot of colored dust too so that could stain the picture if you aren't careful.Sticklers: Able to apply where needed, no issues.Acrylic paint (Americana): Was able to use acrylic without water, and also with water as more of a wash.Iridescent Medium: Mixed with watercolor, made the applied color very shimmery. Didn't give any issues over the Gesso.Art Masking Fluid: Worked fine on top of the Gesso. Still protected the paper from the watercolor, and when I pulled it off I could still feel the Gesso on the paper underneath.

I have been experimenting with painting acrylic on wood where I let the wood grain show. However some wood won't take paint without some kind of medium to bond the two. This is where this Liquitex clear gesso came in.I did a test spot on the back of the panel I was painting, in varying thicknesses. Like the instructions say, unless used very, very thinly the coat will become milky white and lose transparency. I used it on cedar panel that was finely sanded. (I won't know for years if the oils of the cedar will cause the gesso to come off but it should stick far better than the paint put directly on the wood.) As far as the appearance goes, I can clearly see the wood grain and the gesso provided a very gritty tooth, like a fine grit sandpaper, that grabbed the paint well.All in all I am really impressed; I think this may be one of the only transparent gessos made specifically for acrylic paint so for now I'm sticking to it. Attached is an in-progress photo of the panel I used this on; you can clearly still see the wood grain through the gesso.*NOTE: nowhere on the bottle or on the Liquitex website does it say this medium can be used with oils, in case anyone was wondering.

My wife used it with her paint by numbers and said it made painting much easier. The canvas accepted the paint much better and it allowed her to save paint.

This product spreads easily and works exactly as ezxpected. I’ll be buying it again