That $5 goodwill book bled pink ink through three layers of gesso

I tried painting over a cheap paperback cover for a rebind project and the old cover art literally bled through after two coats of gesso. Has anyone else run into weird ink reactions from old mass market books?

2 comments

2 Comments

jamieburns3d ago

Wait, THREE layers of gesso and it STILL bled through? That's wild. I've had some old romance novels from the 80s where the ink would ghost through after a single coat, but never all the way through three. You sure you didn't accidentally grab a book that was printed with like, permanent marker ink or something? I had a mass market Stephen King once that left orange oil stains on my hands after just reading it, so I guess those old cheap prints just have really unstable inks. Gesso is supposed to be thick enough to block that stuff out, but I guess some of those books are just cursed with bad paper.

blaked792d agoMost Upvoted

Oh, come on, you really think three coats of gesso is enough to seal anything? I've had paperback covers where the ink literally soaked through five layers of primer and still showed up like a bad tattoo. That cheap pulp paper they used back then is basically sponge material, no amount of gesso is gonna fix it unless you slap on some actual shellac or polyurethane first. And those orange oil stains you're talking about? That's just the acid in the paper breaking down, not the ink bleeding. You're blaming the wrong culprit here. If you want to stop ghosting on those 80s books, you gotta treat the paper itself, not just paint over it and hope.