I just use the medium, does it really matter?
There are a few things that make me wince; nails on a chalkboard (we don’t have to worry about that anymore), people posting things on FB marketplace with obvious misspelled words, and the use of the phrase “chalk pastels”. Sorry guys, only really cheap pastels that are lower than student grade have chalk in them. When you pay between $4- $8 a stick or more, it is just pastel. There is one other thing that bothers me and that is when I go on art page forums and find people saying that gesso is just white paint. Why should it matter? Because certain things about doing art are there to preserve the longevity of the art and gesso is one of them.
Now I’ll be honest, I go to facebook myself as a jumping off place for research. Just because you have a question, it doesn’t always follow you know what to ask. I will go to the different forums to research and then find out what it is I need to ask. When I was a nail technician, I had a hard problem getting the product to stay on my clients nails. Every new nail tech goes through that by the way; it isn’t anything new. I did get it “Nailed Down” as it where but one of the things I worked to understand was the chemistry of the application for longevity. It is the same way for doing art, you want to make sure it lasts.
Going to facebook is a good jumping off place, but as anyone in any of the current or past administrations will tell you; isn’t a source of absolute fact. The gesso question was asked, and yes one of the answers was cheap white paint. That is not even close to the truth and there were several of us that corrected that notion. Most people start into doing art by stumbling into it. They do a paint and sip, help their children with a craft project, or just decide to paint garden rocks. When you start there, you are using craft paint and don’t really care about the surface or the quality of paint to use. It is when you start hanging your art up on walls and painting more than you expected; consider looking toward painting to make it last.
When you get farther down the line and become a professional, having real knowledge can help you with sales and relationships with galleries. I remember being on one forum about framing pastels and learning “plein air” or “french” mount, where the glass is placed on the surface of the art. Framers worry about the way glass flexes with heat and cold, gallery owners worry about mold. I was able to assure the gallery owner that one of the forum members had “french” mounted a piece and put it in a barn to see what would happen to it after a few years. Nothing happened to it, but the piece was sealed on 4 sides with art tape and between the piece of glass and acid free foam core.
When it comes to forums and groups, these are places for discussions and shared experiences. Videos are out there to learn what you might want to learn but again; nothing beats real research. By the way; gesso is actually a neutralizing barrier between the surface your art is on and the medium you use. Ask museums about Jackson Pollack paintings on natural, untreated linen. They have book and verse on how they have lost those works and why. Museums write reports about losses of works in their inventory and all of this is public record because museums must account for every penny they spend.
A little time invested in education is never wasted, especially when it comes to the medium you use and how you want to use it. As artists are people who are encouraged to break rules, make sure the rules you are breaking are ones you can afford to break in the long run. Have fun, but pay attention to what you can do with what you want to play with.