#painting repair

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Sometimes the glue has seeped onto the painting surface, and needs to be trimmed and peeled back to the edges of the tear. It’s important to preserve the painting layer structure and keep water-based media at their lower level.

I use a starchy paste adhesive to fill the bottom level of the crack above the patch. This may be better done with more PVA of a denser consistency.

I wipe off the water-based glue with a damp cloth so it only fills the patched area.

Another fill and level using spackle. On re-reading of the Artist’s Handbook of Materials and Techniques, I’ve realized this isn’t ideal due to greater rigidity than the surrounding media, and I only did it because it’s what the pro restorer did. A thick acrylic gesso would be preferable. This gets scraped down to surface level, and the areas on top of oil paint wiped clean.

This is a crucial step: while the spackle or gesso paste is wet, I line up a piece of the same type of canvas, and press it against the filler to replicate the texture.

Once the filler dries, I sand and razor it down to be flat with the surface.

Now we’re into the oil-based layer! I mix cold wax medium with oil gesso and apply with a palette knife and rough bristle filbert brush.

We’re still just filling in, but starting to follow the lines of the painting. This is when we compensate for the pucker and the shallower valley effect around the tear.

After at least two days to let the oil gesso dry, I wipe down the area with linseed oil to prevent a dull spot. Then I use oil paints mixed with cold wax medium to approximate color transitions and brushstrokes matching the surrounding painting.

Finally I look to my photos of the painting before the damage, and paint another oil-thinned layer reproducing that area while touching up the painting otherwise. As this is, you can see an unevenness, because I was leery of sanding or scraping the area and scuffing up intact parts of the painting. But that’s just more learning, and to the unexpecting eye, this is again whole. I can only hope this proves to be a long term archival method.

Part 2/2 Part 1 here

Previously exclusive to backersandpatrons, but I wanted to share more on socmeds.

#art restoration #painting repair #oil painting #beloved monsters #portrait #material healing as somatic work

Sun, 08 May 2022 17:00:38