Rabbit-skin glue
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Rabbit-skin glue is a sizing that also acts as an adhesive. It is essentially refined rabbit collagen, and was originally used as an ingredient in traditional gesso.
[edit] History
In traditional oil painting as practiced by the Renaissance painter, skin glue was used to coat the canvas. This is necessary because the linseed oil that forms the base of most oil paint contains an acid, lineolic acid, that will over time destroy the canvas fibers.
[edit] Production
Rabbit skin is first powdered, then combined with water that had been raised to a boil and removed from further heat. After a time, it will turn into a gel.
[edit] Uses
As an adhesive, Rabbit-skin glue is used in the production of the bellows of concertinas.
When used in painting as a sizing, it is spread thoroughly over a canvas that has been placed on the stretcher. When the glue dries, it tightens the canvas. After this has been allowed to dry, an oil-based primer is then applied. When the oil primer has itself dried (which can take weeks), the oil painter has an excellent surface upon which to paint. A canvas sized with rabbit-skin glue can be made tighter than with other alternatives--such as an acrylic-based gesso--because of the shrinkage. This type canvas is also valuable because it can be sanded to a flatter texture, which allows the painter to achieve a finer level of detail than can be achieved with a typical acrylic gesso ground.
It should be noted that this rabbit-skin glue ground is only appropriate for use under oil paint. Acrylic-based media will flake off of a canvas prepared with rabbit-skin glue and are therefore not appropriate.
Many modern manufacturers of prestretched canvases use an acrylic gesso. Although this fact is not well publicised, oil paint placed on top of an acrylic gesso will not be able to firmly attach itself to the acrylic gesso and, following a period of decades, will flake off.
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