What you need to know about how to varnish your acrylic pour painting.
Follow along,
This is an airbrushed acrylic pour painting I did quite a while ago (do you remember it?), and I thought it was time to varnish it. I'm using Liquitex Professional Acrylic Medium gloss varnish and you can get it in a matte finish too if you don't like the gloss. How you apply your varnish is completely up to you, I often use a soft paintbrush or a sponge brush to apply my varnish, either one works well. Watch until the end to see this airbrushed acrylic pour painting come to life!
Let me know in the comments below if you have any questions on finishing paintings
00:00 - 02:53 The Steps Before You Varnish 02:53 - 05:53 How To Get Your Art To SHINE 05:53 - 07:05 Finishing Preferences & Final Reveal
Hi everyone, in today's video I'm just going
to do a quick how-to on how to varnish your painting.
So this one I painted quite a while ago.
I know especially with resin some people say that you
have to wait or you should wait a couple
of weeks to a month for your painting to cure
and really let a lot of that moisture dry up before you try
resining or varnishing it so that the resin or varnish does not
go cloudy or milky, I've never had that happen
but I was also living in a very dry climate for
a long time, so this one I did months ago
so it should be quite cured and ready to go, but for
varnishing today I'm using Liquitex Professionals
acrylic medium, it's a gloss varnish
and it is a seals surface
with a gloss acrylic layer, non-removable, protects from UV damage
non-yellowing water resistant when dry
so non-yellowing and protects from UV damage, so
if it's going to be in a lot
of direct sunlight something like this would be very helpful
and this one is, it's I like varnish sometimes
it's obviously more cost effective than resin
it's not as difficult to work with and a couple
of coats of this you can get a really nice
shiny finish, there's also matte varnish that you can use
if you don't like the gloss and then just
along with my varnish I have my painting
and then I just have a couple of options for applying the
varnish. This is a really soft paintbrush
and then you could also just use a sponge brush. I've used
both. Obviously with a paintbrush every once
in a while if you have just a little piece of hair
that comes out of it you may have to pick that out of your painting.
And then with the sponge brush
sometimes it picks up some dust or particles
so you may have to clean that off before you use it.
but I just like to rest my canvas on a couple of cups
so that any if I have any excess varnish
going down the sides it'll just run right off
and it's not sitting in the varnish while it's drying
so I'm just going to, I don't think you have
to shake it up I'm going to read just to make sure
so this also says before varnishing ensure paint
is fully dry 72 hours to two weeks depending on
thickness. Do not thin with water.
Apply two to three thin coats allowing at least three hours
between coats. Vigorously over brushing may give a cloudy finish.
So I normally do about two coats
and obviously 72 hours to two weeks depending on thickness
If you're working with pour painting
sometimes you can have a really thick amount of paint on your surface
so letting it cure for a
couple of weeks may be a really good option
but I just put some down right on my surface, I'm just
going to use my brush today and just gently brush
this over my surface and I also try and get the
edges of my painting just so that I can have a nice full coverage
and like I said I just prefer
the gloss finish but you could
also do a matte finish if you don't like the gloss.
I'm just doing
nice light strokes just
across my surface make sure
that i have full coverage
looks good so what
i'm going to do is just rinse out my brush i'm going
to let this dry for a couple of hours and
then i'm going to come back and do one more layer
and then we'll get some pictures of it while it's
all nice and dry after getting that nice gloss finish to it all right
so it's been a couple of
hours and my first coat is all dry you can see it's really nice
and shiny that's just the way
that i prefer my pieces to look
that's one reason why i really like resin and the way that resin
makes everything look just give it that really nice gloss finish
so i'm going to do at least
one more layer i may actually try a couple do two
or three more to get a really nice
thicker coat of this varnish just to see how nice
and shiny i can get it but again i'm just going to
pour a little bit right on my canvas
and just use my nice soft brush that i have and just brush it
right on and then once this is all dry
i will get some nice pictures for you
and this painting was
one of my airbrush pieces that i did
and i absolutely love them i have another one actually
i have two more that i haven't finished yet
and i think i'm going to wait and do those with resin
because i really really like the way that those look
and i just really like doing these airbrush
pieces so i got i went over the sides again i went over
the front of it just make sure i have
the sides good and now we'll just let this dry
but i hope you guys like this video i know i've
I've had people asking me how I finish my paintings
and so this is just one really easy way to do
instead of trying to use resin.
There's also spray varnishes that you can use. Just because I'm
working inside I prefer the liquid instead
of trying to use the spray varnish but you could
always do that outside.
So if you want to see a video on the spray varnish let me know and I'll
do a setup with that and I will do another one using resin.
I know a lot of people have questions
on how resin works, how you mix your resin.
So I'll go through that again. But let me know down
in the comments below if you have any questions
on the varnish that I'm using or just any questions
on finishing your paintings.
But thank you guys so much for watching. I hope you guys like this
video and don't forget to subscribe.
I do put out multiple videos a week and I will see you
all in the next one. Thank you so much for watching today.
