Treatment of Form in Gesso Decoration
By Walter Crane
Such forms as these the brush, charged with gesso, almost naturally takes, and the leaf shapes may be considered almost as the reflection of the form of the brush itself.
The modelling of the more raised smooth parts is produced by gradually and lightly adding—superimposing while moist fresh gesso, on the system of pâte sur pâte, which amalgamates with that underneath. The artist, in modelling the limbs of figures, would emphasize the main muscular masses, allowing for the natural tendency of the paste to soften its own edges in running together: so that a limb would be built up somewhat in the way indicated in the drawing by successive layers of the material floated over each other while moist. Of course, the success of the result depends upon not only the nicety of touch but also on the proper consistency of the gesso, which, if mixed too thin, would be likely to lose form and run out of bounds. Gesso, therefore, for brush work should be mixed like the valetudinarian’s gruel in one of Miss Austen’s novels—“Thin, but not too thin.”
System of Modelling with the Brush in Gesso
Gesso Decoration: the Dining-Room, 1a, Holland Park
Designed by Walter Crane. The Side-board Designed by Philip Webb. From a Photograph by W. E. Gray
It is of little use giving exact quantities, since satisfactory working depends upon all sorts of variable conditions, almost in the nature of accidents, such as temperature, quality of the materials, and nature of tools, none of which behaves exactly in the same way on all occasions, and this variability must necessarily lead to different results in different hands.