Re: varnishing oil paintings

In Reply to: varnishing oil paintings posted by Mary on 08/30/00 at 11:31 AM:

: Hi...I am a self taught artist, who is actually fortunate enough to make good money painting childrens portraits in oil...How I got so lucky I will never know..however, I have many questions one of them being..what is the appropriate way to go about varnishing a portrait...All the research I have done says to wait six months or more before putting a final varnish on a painting....Well this isn't realistic,.my clients are local and long distance and I can't really wait that long..so I usually just end up using retouch varnish, and so far it has been fine..but I worry about the long term affect?...also with retouch varnish I don't get a very good sheen, and sometimes I would like for my paintings to have a richer shine and haven't the faintest idea what
: I am doing. Any instruction, tips or ideas would be greatly appreciated..

: Thanks,
: Mary

Hello Mary!

Being pretty much a self-taught artist myself, I ran into that dilemma...then I learned how to do portaits using the underpainting method, adding a translucent color made by diluting opaque paint with medium (called a halfpaste) This gave my paintings a beautiful shine. There are a lot of good mediums you can buy that will make your paint shiny too. And a lot of good recipes for different mediums that you can mix yourself. I learned how to do this from a book called "How to paint like the old Masters" by Joseph Sheppard. I was shocked at how big a difference it made. Recently, I did a portait of my daughter "alla prima" with no medium. It had a beautiful luminuous quality when it dried... and I realized it was because I had dumped the cheap paint and bought really good quality oils! So now I'm not sure which is my favorite method! Good Luck!
 
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