primer on primers part 1: acrylic

Pros

• easy clean up
• no special preparation
• quick

Cons

• stark white
• tactile feel
• wears tools

Acrylic primers are often referred to as acrylic gesso, this is a mistake as they bear nothing in common with true gesso, thus they should be referred to as primer to avoid confusion.

Acrylic primer sometimes required thinning with water (brand dependent), but after that you may apply it to any surface without further preparation. Consistency seems to be user dependent, I suggest it be thinned similar to oil primer to allow even drying. It’s suggested you seal wood first to prevent outgassing into the paint. It’s also suggested that you apply a minimum of three coats, but it’s fast drying enough for this to be done quickly.

Once dry (that night or the next day) you have a stark white surface that I feel normally requires an oil wash before it’s usable, you can add acrylic paint to the gesso, but this can reduce the adhesion of the primer. To counteract that you can add marble dust, pumice powder, or whiting. Companies have begun to sell colored acrylic primers to offset all that extra work recently.

The adhesion of oils to acrylic primer is purely mechanical, that means that marble dust or something like it must be added to allow enough tooth for the oils to stay on the primer. This also causes an abnormally quick wearing down of your brushes and painting tools and an unneeded amount of drag while working.

Proper brush and tools cleaning

1. Use a mild soap and water or one of the specialized brush cleaners.
2. Wipe tools out on a rag first, then, if desired, rinse in mineral/white spirits or turpentine.
3. It’s possible to just use a drying oil instead of the mineral spirits. I personally find this a waste of the more expensive linseed and walnut oils.
4. Wash brushes gently with soap and cool running water until the water runs clean.
5. Make sure not to use too much pressure, but don’t be shy.
6. Watch out with using hot water, it can cause splaying of the bristles, loosening or removal of the ferrule, and hairs to fall out.
7. Finally, reshape with the fingers and allow them time to dry. If done correctly all the paint, solvent, mediums, and soap should be gone from the brush and it’ll be good for your next session.
8. Some splaying is inevitable with all brushes, after all they’re still hand made, but good care of brushes should make them last a long time.
9. Don’t pull out stray hairs, cut them off with scissors, pulling may weaken the glue bond.
10. If you’re using synthetics you may quickly dip them into boiling water and they should reshape nicely. DON’T do this with natural hairs, and don’t dip the ferrule, it’ll ruin them.
11. Keep ’scrub’ brushes for harsher working, I use some cheap brushes for this type of work, as it always ruins the brushes much more quickly than normal strokes.
12. Better made brushes (and in my experience natural hairs) splay less. I’ve been having good luck with Trekell & Co.
13. Keep metal tools dry, some are prone to rusting.
14. Clean them after every session! This is very important, any residual paint inside the ferrule can ruin it quickly.