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Varnishing Your Paintings

The completion of a masterpiece does not end with the last stroke or signing the piece. To protect the piece and help maintain its beauty many artists varnish their art. This process is not essential, but is one of the benchmarks defining professional artwork.
Varnishing is an important part of oil painting. This process helps preserve your painting and also brings out the best qualities. Varnish helps protect your painting because it has some properties that shield it against the pollution. It also makes the painting more brilliant because varnish brings out the colors more. However to achieve this results you must be willing to work a little bit harder because varnishing is not easy task to do. Why not work a little harder and longer? After all making that oil painting of yours also required a lot of hard work, what’s a little more sacrifice to bring out the best in your work.

Here are some following guidelines on varnishing your painting. Remember though that the time to finish varnishing your painting depends on the size of your painting.

1. Wait for the painting to completely dry before applying varnish. The length of the drying period depends on the thickness of the paint. This could usually lead to months; the most could be 9 months.
2. Before applying the varnish clean the painting first. Clean it first with cotton wool with water. Remove all the dust, dirt and grease that have accumulated from the months of waiting it to be dry.
3. Dry the painting again with your cotton cool and use your fingers gently to remove the cotton fibers that have been stuck.
4. Dry your painting again facing a wall inwards for several hours or even overnight. Drying it overnight could be better.
5. To apply the varnish use a flat bristled brush. If you do not want it to be too shiny, you may use gloss one rather than matt varnish.
6. The painting should be flat and then you work the varnish from top to bottom. You will then, apply the varnish from one edge to the other in parallel strokes. Work in the same direction always.
7. To give better finishes apply more varnish or a second coating at the right angles when the first coating has been dry.
8. To stop the varnish from running down the paint you must leave the painting flat for at least 10 minutes. It must be then propped up against a wall facing inwards to dry further.
9. Touch the edge of the painting to see if it’s still tacky, this will help you see if the varnish has dried. Depending on the weather, the varnish should dry within a day or two.

Here are some more tips to make your varnish look better:
• Try to varnish the painting with one go to prevent any lines. The lines will appear on the place where you stopped when the first time you applied the varnish begins to dry up.
• To have equal amounts of varnish on each stroke, try to put the same amount of varnish on the brush.
• Try to avoid environments that are very dusty, they will get dust stuck in your painting. Try to keep pets out too as they may end up touching your painting and paw prints will be seen.
• Consider using acrylics if the wait for the oil paint to dry is too long.