Post-Painting

So its been a while since I've completed my work "Curing the Disease".  I have since sprayed a varnishing coat over "Curing.." and "Standard.." so that there is no inconsistancy of gloss to matt finish. 

In my typical fashion, I made a huge error in the varnishing process.  The varnish says to thin with water, but I know for a fact that my mixture of paints is partially water-soluble, so in order to lower the risk of destroying my work, I thinned the varnish with Golden Airbrush Medium.  Wise?  No.  After doing the varnishes, I looked on the cartons to see what technical/chemical information I should document for reference at a later date if I need to make corrections.  That is when I made the realization that I made a mistake.  Not only of the instruction to thin with water, but the notice on the back of the airbrush medium that says "not to be used as a final varnish".  Dumb.  A very unfortunate result was that the medium dried in clots in the spray gun and covered both paintings with tiny white speckles, which I have had to scratch and rub off with a damp rag. 

So they will need to be re-varnished after my show.  There is good news, though;  the paintings both hold a consistant matte finish, which will make photographing the work much easier.  Also, when I re-varnish the work, I will be using a mixture of matte and gloss varnishes.  I really noticed just how differently the colors and darks look in a painting when they are glossy as opposed to matte.  They are richer and darker, and overall just look much better.  So after this February show, I will have the paintings looking better and with the correct mixture/application of varnish.

Now I'm moving on to my next project.  I am taking a sabbatical from painting so that I can focus on my photographic voice in my work.  It's only been about a week, but I'm already dying to paint again.  So I may have to just split up my time between painting another project and working on photography.  I'm back to the drawing board (so to speak) with looking for locations to shoot at, models to pose, and light gels to use for my lighting scheme.