Do NOT varnish acrylic ink paintings!

I recently painted a really pretty little box canvas using my FW acrylic inks



Based on a sketch of a still life, set up by a friend of mine.



Today, 10 days later, I tried to varnish it using a gloss acrylic varnish and a large flat brush.

And now I am sad.

The varnish has dissolved the inks and caused all the colours to mix together and turn muddy.




It might be possible to get away with using a spray varnish (I haven't tried it) but please please please don't use a brush!

Meanwhile, I'll give this one a few days, remove the varnish (using varnish remover), re-gesso the canvas and start again with a more durable medium.

7 comments:

  1. Aw how gutting :( I suppose you never know if you don't try but all the same! Hope the next one's more successful x

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  2. Oh that's such a shame, it was so pretty too. Sometimes making mistakes is the best way to learn though, you won't do that again!

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  3. How right you both are Kathelle and Margaret. We're all learning all the time!

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  4. That is frustrating, such a lovely painting too.
    Annabel

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  5. It has a misty soft focus effect. Someone might like it that way.

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  6. Oh Stephanie what a shame. I am finding glazing a problem too in my art journals. Brushes are useless. Have you tried applying with a credit card. Though perhaps it could be the varnish too. Trial and error I suppose sadly. I am going to get some gel medium which people keep mentioning but I don't know how it works on paintings. I know it works for mixed media art journaling. Good Luck with the next one.

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  7. Awww... poor you. I quite like its softness, but I can see that you would be pretty fed up about this! I once spent a lot of time printing Thomas the Tank Engine pictures, cutting them out with care, then using them to embellish a play-table, on which I had drawn railway tracks with a marker pen. Once I had finished, I started to paint on some varnish... which dissolved the marker and smudged it everywhere, ruining my table.
    So I know just how you felt!
    The only comfort could be that you didn't try this on a big piece, that had taken you days and days of work...
    Show us the re-done version when you finish? X

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