Depending on the surface that i am going to paint on, I am now applying a number of techniques for preparing the surfaces prior to painting, complete finishing processes of sealing coats and varnish layers to give my paintings a polished look and an archival feel.
In this post I will describe how I have used these techniques to give some of my paintings a three dimensional look of an art object, as opposed to only a two dimensional painting.
To accomplish this I have chosen to paint on panels mounted on a 1.5 inch deep cradle. I prepared the wooden edges of the cradle with two coats of Golden GAC 100 Multi-Purpose Polymer sealer, followed by several coats of Gesso, sanded to a smooth finish. I then continue my painting around the edge. I chose the 1.5 inch depth in that I feel that is is sufficient to give a three dimensional feel without overdoing it, keeping the side panels small with respect to the front image surface.
Pictured below are side views of my "Oceanic Bridge", "Fishing in the Clouds" and "Empire State Building" paintings.
In this post I will describe how I have used these techniques to give some of my paintings a three dimensional look of an art object, as opposed to only a two dimensional painting.
To accomplish this I have chosen to paint on panels mounted on a 1.5 inch deep cradle. I prepared the wooden edges of the cradle with two coats of Golden GAC 100 Multi-Purpose Polymer sealer, followed by several coats of Gesso, sanded to a smooth finish. I then continue my painting around the edge. I chose the 1.5 inch depth in that I feel that is is sufficient to give a three dimensional feel without overdoing it, keeping the side panels small with respect to the front image surface.
Pictured below are side views of my "Oceanic Bridge", "Fishing in the Clouds" and "Empire State Building" paintings.
As you can see, the paintings have become three dimensional objects that can be viewed from any angle to get a slightly different impression.
When the sealing and varnish coats are completed, my intension is that these painting objects will give the impression of viewing a smooth block of marble mounted on the wall. My hope is to give my representational realistic paintings a modern feel.
In each case, when the painting was finished I applied a sealing coat to provide a uniform finish. I currently use a mixture of half Acrylic Glazing Liquid (Gloss) and half Aribrush Medium. The airbrush medium is a bit matte in finish which takes the high shine off of the gloss Glazing Liquid, yielding a very nice mildly satin finish. I arrived at this combination with the Golden tech support folks. My major criteria was that I must have a sealing coat that is absolutely smooth and will not add any brush stroke marks to the surface of the painting.
The following is a view of the Oceanic Bridge painting after the application of the sealing coat.
When the sealing and varnish coats are completed, my intension is that these painting objects will give the impression of viewing a smooth block of marble mounted on the wall. My hope is to give my representational realistic paintings a modern feel.
In each case, when the painting was finished I applied a sealing coat to provide a uniform finish. I currently use a mixture of half Acrylic Glazing Liquid (Gloss) and half Aribrush Medium. The airbrush medium is a bit matte in finish which takes the high shine off of the gloss Glazing Liquid, yielding a very nice mildly satin finish. I arrived at this combination with the Golden tech support folks. My major criteria was that I must have a sealing coat that is absolutely smooth and will not add any brush stroke marks to the surface of the painting.
The following is a view of the Oceanic Bridge painting after the application of the sealing coat.
When I apply a final varnish coat to a painting, again my criteria is that the application of the varnish layer adds not additional brush marks to the surface. The mixture that I use is 4 parts Polymer Varnish with UVLS (Gloss), 1 part Polymer Varnish with UVLS (Satin), and 2 parts distilled water. This again yields a mildly satin finish.