Reality check!

[Lacey Lewis]

I completed this painting on July 30th of this year. I was up close to it the other day and noticed this!

Right now it appears to only be this small area of the background, but seeing that it has only been a few months I am guessing that I can expect to see it happen more as time passes on.

Now I know that I need to learn all the measures to take to make sure that this does not happen again. I checked all of my other work, and no other paintings appear to have any cracking.

As for this one... is this cracking, or delaminating? What can I do to fix it?

Here are the stats: painted on a pre-stretched, pre (acrylic) primed canvas using paint and Liquin only.

[Maria Nemchuk]

Lacey,
I heard that Liquin and such can cause a delamination. Personally I don't use it as it darkens too much and I can't stand the smell of it.

[Richard Monro]

Lacey,

This look like crazing to me. It occurs when the surface paint has less elasticity than the underlying surface. This sometimes is a lean over fat phenomenon in which a paint with a low oil content is placed over a high oil content film. Crazing can also occur when the paint doesn't properly bond to the under-painting. Unless you plan to scrape the paint off and redo it, I wouldn't worry about it. Many old masters have the same problem.

[Lacey Lewis]

Thanks Richard... I have never heard of "crazing." Maybe we could have a dictionary in this section that covers words like crazing, delamination, etc?

I guess that I will wait and see how much of this occurs and over what areas before I decide what to do about it. It would be quite annoying to fix up one area only for it to spread.

[Claudemir Bonfim]

Hi Lacey,
Craze is by definition a fine crack in a surface or glaze, and Richard is right, it looks like crazing.
If you paint "fat on lean" it will prevent such problems. But if it is already a "lean" coat of paint, probably it is the Liquin or maybe the paint itself which has fillers in excess that can cause this.