Warning! Don't use damar as a final picture varish

[Virgil Elliott]

Originally Posted by William Whitaker

Virgil,

Thanks so much for responding to my email and contributing to my post. Once again, I'm amazed by the effort and care you give to provide us good and useful information. Everybody who reads this post on damar varnish should copy your contribution and save it for reference.

All you folks out there in Oil Painting Land, Virgil really knows his stuff. Pay attention.

Bill,

Thanks for the vote of confidence. It seems every time I post here, I'm deluged with questions to answer. Once my book is published, I'll just recommend people buy that and find the answers there. Watson-Guptill has sent me a contract, and is scheduling it for release in April of 2007. Meanwhile, I have a lot of illustrations to do before my deadline, so I need to put more time into that until everything is as good as I can make it.

If you're ever in my neck of the woods, look me up.

Virgil

[Kimberly Dow]

Virgil,

A hearty congratulations! I'm so glad to hear the book is being published.

[Anthony Emmolo]

You know your stuff Virgil,

The colors that dry chalky are indeed the earth colors. Two of my favorite earth tones are Burnt Umber and Burnt Sienna. They are both known for chalkiness. However, Burnt Umber with a mix of Ultramarine Blue or Prussian blue gives a beautiful warm deep shadow. I've tried other brown family colors and I enjoy Burnt Umber the most. I've also done the oil rubs, and it works very well for small areas. I guess that is the way I will have to work in the future. I was using the Retouch varnish to work the whole painting at once.

Another question though:
What is the proper use of Retouch Varnish? A friend of mine, a 65ish year old woman from Milano, who was trained in the old style studios of Italy in her youth told me that Retouch Varnish has a different use. Her English wasn't good enough to explain the proper function of Retouch Varnish, and my Italian wasn't good enough to rely on that.

I live in Shanghai, China and books are basically impossible to come by here. I naively left my Ralph Mayer book in California. Can you tell me a website that would have information on the dangers of misusing materials, and the correct ways to use them. Please don't mention Amazon.com for a purchase. I'm here rebuilding an art career after a couple of bad gallery sale years and my credit card has been melted during the crunch as my debts went through the roof. At the moment I am a part-time painter-part time English teacher.
Thank you in advance,
Anthony

[Virgil Elliott]

Originally Posted by Anthony Emmolo

You know your stuff Virgil,

Another question though:
What is the proper use of Retouch Varnish? A friend of mine, a 65ish year old woman from Milano, who was trained in the old style studios of Italy in her youth told me that Retouch Varnish has a different use. Her English wasn't good enough to explain the proper function of Retouch Varnish, and my Italian wasn't good enough to rely on that.

I live in Shanghai, China and books are basically impossible to come by here. I naively left my Ralph Mayer book in California. Can you tell me a website that would have information on the dangers of misusing materials, and the correct ways to use them. Please don't mention Amazon.com for a purchase. I'm here rebuilding an art career after a couple of bad gallery sale years and my credit card has been melted during the crunch as my debts went through the roof. At the moment I am a part-time painter-part time English teacher.
Thank you in advance,
Anthony

Anthony,

The intended use for retouch varnish is to help a painting look better that is too recently completed for it to be ready for a final varnish. However, I'm not so sure that's a good idea, as far as the long-term effects it might have on the picture are concerned. It depends on a number of factors, including what kind of retouch varnish, what method is used for applying it, how much of it is applied, how freshly painted the painting is, what pigments were used, how thick the paint is, etc., etc. I spray it on lightly when I use it at all, and then only after waiting as long as I can for the paint to cure. I use a Paasche VL-3 airbrush for spraying it, and I do it outdoors on a hot day while wearing a gas mask. A friend of mine died recently of lung disease after having worked with airbrush as an illustrator for too many years, so I'm very careful about spraying anything.

I don't know of any web site I could recommend for reliable technical information about painting, but these issues are discussed regularly on the Cowdisley Forum, on Yahoo Groups. I'm the Moderator there, and participate in the discussions fairly regularly.

Virgil Elliott