Varnish Project Final Thoughts

Top to bottom: Sunflower, Hibiscus, Mirabilis Jalapa

I first started this project because I wanted to see if there was a way for me to manipulate the finishes of my paintings without sacrificing the values and clarity of the paintings themselves combined with my lack of experience in photographing my art. Anytime I would photograph my artwork I would be battling against the glare due to my high-gloss varnish and I just wouldn’t be pleased with how it looked. My fiancé said that he likes the glare because it shows off paint strokes in various areas and while I agree, it still doesn’t feel like it renders well in photographs. I even had the idea to add to every one of my paintings in my art shop a short video or GIF of me rotating the painting back and forth to give a better feel of the paintings - and while I still plan on doing this before my big website launch, it’s still something that kind of frustrates me.

Mirabilis Jalapa

4x4in. oil on canvas panel - sold; click to purchase prints here; click to purchase stickers here

Full disclosure: these flowers may not be Mirabilis Jalapa but Google gave me a very similar image/article result that looked identical to the reference photo that I took and I'm going with it. That being said, I loved the pinks, purples and blues that made up the petals and I really like the pops of orange that stand out against the petals. I also wanted to try out making a more "blurred" background so I really pushed the brushstrokes in the background to give them less of a form feel and more of a feeling of other foliage behind these three flowers. This is the third and final painting in my series of testing out the different Gamvar varnishes, and this painting is varnished with the "matte varnish" - another full disclosure: I don't really like this varnish. I felt that it really dulled everything out and washed out the darker values that I had in the background compared to the flowers in the foreground, making them appear to be very similar in value. That being said, I'm still glad that I tried it out to see what it looks like - it even gives me vibes of those old 90's tween novel covers.

Hibiscus

4x4in. oil on canvas panel - sold; click to purchase prints here; click to purchase stickers here

My husband's grandmother's house has a border of hibiscus bushes and every year these beautiful white hibiscus flowers bloom. One day I caught sight of these flowers and fell in love with the way the warm sunlight shown on them and even shown through the petals. This is my second painting out of three to test out the three Gamvar varnishes, and this painting is varnished with the "satin varnish" - I like that this varnish causes less glare than the high gloss, but I find that it doesn't really punch up the colors and values like the high-gloss picture varnish does. It also leans more matte than the high gloss, so maybe in the future I will test out mixing half-gloss and half-satin mixtures.

Sunflower

 

4x4in. oil on canvas panel - sold; click to purchase prints here; click to purchase stickers here

Here in Nebraska you can find plenty of wild sunflower bushes everywhere in the months of August and September. There was a bush growing near my apartment complex and I just had to take some reference photos of them! There were so many birds and bees enjoying the flowers and the yellow petals looked so striking against the stark blue of the Midwest sky. I wanted to test out the three different Gamvar varnishes and I thought a floral series would be a nice change. This painting is varnished with the "picture varnish" - I like the high gloss look, just not too easy for a beginner like me to photograph. I think sunflowers may be my favorite flower!