Good morning everyone!
I have finally finished up my video on how to varnish an acrylic painting. This is a final step that a lot of artists skip and they really shouldn't. The final varnish coat is meant to protect your artwork for many years to come. Often we don't think about the environmental elements that are wreaking havoc on our paintings. Dust, dirt, UV rays, etc. The final varnish coat protects your work from all of this. When you purchase a varnish I would make sure to choose one that won't yellow over time and is removable with mineral spirits or some other medium. You want the varnish to be removable in case someone in the future needs to touch something up on it. (say it is damaged somehow and needs repair) Also, this is handy in case you find that you need to add something else to the painting.
Varnish is also a wonderful way to bring out all of the rich colors in a painting. Sometimes certain paints will have more gloss while other colors remain matte. Adding a final varnish will help to unify the texture and gloss of the entire piece.
When choosing a varnish you can choose matte or gloss. I usually prefer gloss because I like that "wet paint" look, but matte varnish works just as well.
Anyway, here is my video demonstration. Enjoy!
Showing posts with label painting techniques. Show all posts
Showing posts with label painting techniques. Show all posts
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Monday, August 1, 2011
Gurney on Sargent
One of my favorite modern day illustrators, James Gurney, recently had this blog post. I found it so interesting and inspiring that I wanted to share it with my followers as well. Enjoy!
John Singer Sargent traveled to America in 1890, he went painting with Frederick S. Pratt, an amateur painter and founding trustee of the Worcester Art Museum.
Luckily for us, Pratt wrote down what Sargent had to say about painting methods.
“Choose simple subjects, near objects at first. Do not try to make a pretty picture so much as to render truthful effects. Paint over the whole canvas with colors approximating the masses so as to obscure [sic--did he mean establish?] relations of tones while working—when finishing, ‘paint into paint’ when possible and in portraits, paint around the features in detail, using small brushes rarely.
“Always use a full brush and a larger one than necessary. Paint with long sweeps, avoiding spots and dots (‘little dabs’). Never think of other painter’s pictures or how some one else would treat a subject but follow your own choice of colors with exact fidelity to nature.”
This was quoted from the new book John Singer Sargent:Figures and Landscapes
John Singer Sargent traveled to America in 1890, he went painting with Frederick S. Pratt, an amateur painter and founding trustee of the Worcester Art Museum.
Luckily for us, Pratt wrote down what Sargent had to say about painting methods.
“Choose simple subjects, near objects at first. Do not try to make a pretty picture so much as to render truthful effects. Paint over the whole canvas with colors approximating the masses so as to obscure [sic--did he mean establish?] relations of tones while working—when finishing, ‘paint into paint’ when possible and in portraits, paint around the features in detail, using small brushes rarely.
“Always use a full brush and a larger one than necessary. Paint with long sweeps, avoiding spots and dots (‘little dabs’). Never think of other painter’s pictures or how some one else would treat a subject but follow your own choice of colors with exact fidelity to nature.”
This was quoted from the new book John Singer Sargent:Figures and Landscapes
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