Protect and enhance your artwork: A step-by-step guide to varnishing your painting for a lasting finish.
It was a large portrait on hardboard, about 48″ tall. Having just done some mural work with a well known muralist, I attempted to copy his method of using a household paint roller and a clear coat.
It was a disaster.
The medium looked so milky white while it was drying, that I started to panic like Rowan Atkinson did in the movie “Bean” when he sneezed on Whistler’s Mother. I tried to clean off the half dried medium with a damp towel. To my dismay, the medium started globbing up and totally distorted the fine detail work on the surface. Some areas had no varnish. Other areas were covered with a streaky, bumpy film. My painting was a hideous mess.
I said I would never varnish a painting again.
Except that I did.
I knew I needed to learn how to do it correctly in order to protect my paintings from dust and debris, saturate the colors and dark values more, and give it a uniform finish.
What I’m going to teach you is the process I learned basically from trial and error over the years.
I’m not scared to varnish any more. But I like to say a quick prayer before I put brush to canvas, because if you don’t varnish correctly, you can mess up a good painting very quickly!
Here’s a video that will show you the correct way to do it…
Here are the steps, simplified.
Use acrylic matte varnish. Not matte medium. (unless you want a flat finish) Matte varnish dries to a satin sheen and looks fantastic. If you want a little more saturation on your dark values and colors, you can add some gloss medium to your matte varnish and mix them together very thoroughly.
Put your painting on a flat table, or slightly angled. Don’t varnish the painting on a vertical easel or you could get drips and it will look terrible.
Use a 1″ or larger flat brush that’s in good condition. Put your varnish in a cup or container than is wide enough to accommodate the brush.
Dip the brush into the varnish and apply from top down, left to right, overlapping slightly. Do not overbrush!
Continue the process all the way down and when you’re done, leave it alone for a couple hours. It should dry completely clear.
That’s all there is to it!
What do you think? What are YOUR experiences with varnishing? Do you have any stories–or tips–to share? Do you avoid varnishing completely?
P.S. Did you find this post helpful or encouraging? If so, send it on ahead! Let others know with the share buttons below. I’d love to hear your comments. Thank you so much! Also, do you have a question on acrylic portrait painting you’d like answered? Let me know, and I’d be happy to help!
One of the most important aspects of acrylic portrait painting is setting up your palette.
It’s often overlooked, but having a palette setup that works well for you can minimize frustration, increase productivity, reduce paint costs, and even enhance accuracy in your portrait.
Recently, an artist asked me how I set up my palette. Of course, there’s many ways to do it.
I’m not going to say the way I do it is the right way, but it works for me. And it may work for you as well.
I use a traditional wood palette–about 14″ wide and 18″ long. I customized it a bit by adding a lip to the edge. That keeps my matte medium from dripping off the side. The lip is thick chipboard about 2″ in width that I bent and glued onto the wood. Then I sealed it with gloss medium to keep the moisture from warping it.
Let me help you get started on your new portrait today…
Before I start a new painting, I put aluminum foil over the entire surface, and attach it securely to back of the palette with clear packaging tape. It holds very well.
Then I lay out my paints.
I keep them wet as I can with a spray bottle of water while I work, spraying them about every 15 minutes or so.
When my mixing area gets too full of paint, I add a fresh piece of aluminum foil over the area, folding it over slightly to conform to the rounded shape of the palette. The previous layer of wet paint holds it down. This way I am not wasting paint. All my main colors on the palette remain until my painting is done or they dry up.
I throw the discarded, soiled pieces of aluminum foil away in a bag and then I get paid for them when I recycle them with my aluminum cans. And it doesn’t pollute the environment either!
Here is a video where I explain further how to set this palette up…
Question: What do you use for your palette…and why?
Enjoy your portrait painting and let me know if I can help you in any way.
All the best,
P.S. Did you find this post helpful or encouraging? If so, send it on ahead! Let others know with the share buttons below. I’d love to hear your comments. Thank you so much! Also, do you have a question on acrylic portrait painting you’d like answered? Let me know, and I’d be happy to help!
Transform your studio with the essential lighting tips for every artist
For acrylic portrait painters and all artists, there is a truth we can’t hide from: we can only paint as well as we can see
So, how well are we seeing in our art studios?
Here’s a question I got from one of my art students:
“I would like to paint in the evening but find out the next day my skin tones are off. I have the room overhead a one lamp with the daylight bulb but doesn’t seem to be enough. I do have cataracts which may be part of the problem but can’t have that fixed until next year. You said you currently have no windows in your studio so what do you use for good lighting? I’m sorry to bother you with a question like this but I was quite upset this morning to see what I did last night!”
Thanks so much and God Bless.
Sharon
Here’s my answer:
Hi Sharon,
It’s annoying to not have enough light. I remember when I first started painting, I would work with those old yellowish incandescent bulbs. When I took my painting outside to photograph it I said, “That’s NOT how it looked in my studio!” The colors were off, and it looked grainy.
Now with LED bulbs being so inexpensive (to buy and to run) I have 10 lights in my studio with 100 watt-equivalent daylight spectrum bulbs. Best part is they only use 14 watts a piece, so it’s pretty energy efficient!
They are simple clamp-style lamps with metal reflectors that you can buy at your home improvement store for about $5-10 a piece. You don’t even have to buy them all at once. You can do it like I did. Every time I ran to Menards, I would buy another lamp. I spaced it out over the course of a couple years!
Here is a shot of my messy, well-used studio with the lights aimed at the ceiling. The reflected light works great to illuminate even a large painting. While I’m working there are virtually no shadows from my hands and arms to interfere with my painting.
I do have a window in my studio now, but it doesn’t do a lot. It’s mostly the light bubs that illuminate everything for me.
P.S. Did you find this post helpful or encouraging? If so, send it on ahead! Let others know with the share buttons below. I’d love to hear your comments. Thank you so much! Also, do you have a question on acrylic portrait painting you’d like answered? Let me know, and I’d be happy to help!
If you’re like me, printing off reference photos for painting a portrait is a major inconvenience.
You have to run to the photo developer and get them printed off, hoping they turn out ok, then tape them up next to your canvas, and struggle with them falling off. Or you try to print your own from your own computer and it costs you an arm and a leg in ink.
I got tired of it.
I asked for a Kindle Fire for Christmas and got one. Photos look outstanding in it.
I knew I wanted to set it up next to my canvas, but how would I get it to stay there? I thought of attaching a wire to the ceiling but that sounded sketchy.
So I made my own contraption to hold it up out of cardboard. If said this before, but if wasn’t an artist, I’d be a “mad scientist” inventor like Doc Brown from Back to the Future! The thing I made to hold my Kindle worked great.
One of my students saw it in a video and said she was having “technology envy.” 🙂 She thought the idea was cool. So I figured, why not share this with my students?
I explain more about it and how it can help you in my video below…
Hope this helps in your painting endeavors. Would you like step by step instructions on how to build one for yourself? Here is a free video course that will show you how!
P.S. Did you find this post helpful or encouraging? If so, send it on ahead! Let others know with the share buttons below. I’d love to hear your comments. Thank you so much! Also, do you have a question on acrylic portrait painting you’d like answered? Let me know, and I’d be happy to help!
You have some time to paint over the weekend. You set up your reference photo, knock out a nice looking sketch, and then excitedly start to paint…
But something happens.
After a few layers, things start to unravel. Suddenly, it just doesn’t look like the person you’re trying to do a portrait of anymore. You paint some more in an attempt to restore what you lost in the sketch, and now you’ve only made it worse!
Frustration sets in.
Can I fix this painting? Or do I have to start over? How much time did I spend on this already?
I had exactly this question asked of me by a student…
I can get a good likeness with the sketch but I seem to lose lots of the likeness after a few layers of paint. What do you think happens? –Ron
My answer back to him will be the basis for this article today. I think it will benefit you as well, if you have lost your likeness after sketching. I know I have!
Here’s some tips to prevent the likeness in your sketch from being lost in your painting and also, how to get it back on track if you do.
1. Seal in Your Sketch
I know this sounds simple, but if you just start painting over pencil the thick paint on your brush will lift off some of the pigment on your canvas and it will smear. The end result is a muddy mix of paint and pigment and lost detail.
First of all, use colored pencil instead of graphite pencil to do your sketch. Burnt ochre or a similar color works best. Then carefully seal in the sketch with a wide synthetic bristle brush and matte medium.
Once it’s dry you will have a barrier between your sketch and your paint.
2. Paint Lightly at First
When you start your actual painting process, I recommend to use thin glazes of paint (tiny bits of paint mixed with generous portions of matte medium) and gently block in the color and value. You want to just barely see the change between the white canvas and the color you’re putting down at first.
Then, as you add more layers and depth, you can get aggressive with your paint. (At least compared to how you start out!) In the beginning, you’ll use a ratio of 90% medium to 10% paint and then later, closer to 50-50.
By going light, you will preserve the detail of your sketch beneath. Only toward the middle to the end of the painting process will the sketch get completely covered up.
3. Convert Pencil Lines to Paint
Paint over the details of your sketch intermittently with round brushes as you paint the large areas with your flat brush. It will be a constant push-and pull between blocking in large areas of value and color, and fussy detail work. Toward the end of the painting you will be favoring more of the detail aspect of your painting.
As you darken in some of these pencil lines, you’ll ensure you don’t lose that valuable detail that you laid out in the sketching stage while applying large layers.
If you’d like to learn more, sign up to receive my portrait painting tips via email. I’ll send you video lessons to show you how to paint a realistic portrait in acrylic step-by-step!
Remember that it is shading and value–those differences between light and dark with all the subtle variations–that describe a three dimensional illusion on a two-dimensional surface.
Lines can’t do that.
Only shading can.
The lines in our sketch are there to tell us where to put the shading in during the painting process. And if you do some shading during the sketching process, even better. Then you’ll be able to just enhance those areas with paint.
It is the shading (the use of value) that tells us how large someone’s chin is, or the roundness of their nose, or fullness of their cheek, or boniness of their forehead.
So, my point is this: do some shading on your sketch, and that will help your painting process along.
5. You Will Lose the Likeness to Some Degree
That’s normal. Happens to me all the time when I paint. Knowing this ahead of time will clear your mind of unrealistic expectations so that your frustration level can go down…and you can paint to the best of your ability.
The reason that the likeness inevitably does get lost is that as you’re adding these various values in different places, there will be some spots on your painting that are just less finished than others. You may have painted the eyes about as dark as they are in the reference photo, but the eyebrows haven’t “caught up” yet.
Or maybe you added some deep shadows under the chin, but you haven’t quite dialed in the shading for the cheeks. If the person’s chubby cheeks are a main part of their features, then missing this aspect can really throw off the likeness.
And this can go for parts all over the face.
I am working on a painting right now of three children as I write this blog post, and the likenesses aren’t quite there yet. In fact, they look “off” to me. But I know that if I stick with it, it will work out. I prayed that God would help me to do it well, and I believe He will.
However, as in all of life, there’s a struggle we have to go through to get to the other side. You can’t have the mountains without the valleys. So, I’ll stick with this, keep looking at my reference photo, keep praying and putting paint on the canvas.
And the end result, by God’s grace, will be a fantastic painting that the client will love.
So for you, this means that as you bring all the unfinished areas of your portrait to completion, eventually, the likeness will not only get restored to how it was during your sketch, but it will be even better.
6. Get Critiques of Your Work
When you’ve tried the other tips and you feel like your painting is way off track you may want to consider getting a critique. If you have an artist group where you meet in person, that may be a good way to go. I have a Facebook group as well if you need some quick feedback. If you haven’t already, I invite you to join the group. The folks there are very helpful.
Also, I do personal, one-to-one video critiques that you will show you precisely what you need to do to fix problem areas of your painting. Learn more here.
7. Start Over…If You Must
I don’t recommend starting over a painting, except as a last resort. I think it’s much better to stick with a painting and resolve problem areas to build confidence in your skills as an artist and to save time and money.
But if you find yourself sinking way too much time into the painting, reworking the same area over and over, and the texture is built up so much that you want to sand it off, it may be time to start over.
If the painting is in the beginning stages, and the composition or likeness was wrong from the start, then re-doing it may be the best choice. It may take less time to just start over than try to rectify your mistakes. You’ll have to look at your painting and ask yourself “how far off is it?” Sometimes we get hard on ourselves as artists (we’re perfectionists by nature) and it might be just a tiny thing that can make all the difference.
I had a painting like that. It just didn’t look like the guy. Then I added a reflection on his eye that took all of one minute to paint–and that did it. It was him!
So, get a second opinion with a good critique, and then you’ll know if it’s worth it to start over. The person critiquing your may be able to give you an idea of how far off the rails you are. You may be closer that you think!
And there you have it: 7 tips to help you how to not lose your likeness, or if you do, how to get it back. Let me know how this helps!
Blessings to you and your painting,
P.S. Did you find this post helpful or encouraging? If so, send it on ahead! Let others know with the share buttons below. I’d love to hear your comments. Thank you so much! Also, do you have a question on acrylic portrait painting you’d like answered? Let me know, and I’d be happy to help!
