Varnishing …

Concerning the varnish…

Unfortunately I currently do not have the expertise to create my own varnish and know it will work out flawlessly on this painting. For the same reason I have not made my own paints for this particular work. I will therefore rely on bought Archival & reversable non-yellowing varnishes in spray cans (to avoid brushmarks).

I will start (after letting the painting an appropriate amount of months) with covering the entire panel with a gloss varnish. This will function similarly to ‘oiling-out’ the painting, brightening the colours and equalising the ‘sunken-in’ segments of the painting, creating a unified whole. This step is crucial!!! I however not want the painting to have a high-gloss finish. This would create glares, especially when the room in which it is hanging is not expertly lit, breaking the illusion of lit figures emerging out of the darkness and ruining the viewers pleasure.

On top of the first few layers of gloss varnish I will put a satin-finish varnish ( in my personal experience satin varnish does not work well for ‘oiling-out’ a painting, but it is the finish I desire).

On top of the satin varnish I will paint details with a high-gloss varnish. These details will include the lightning and the reflections in the eyes of characters, especially of Typheon and his snakes in reference to Hesiod’s description of him having fiery eyes.

Having a glare on these details will aid the composition. White paint is the lightest light one can use in painting, but it falls short in delineating luminous bodies (as Leonardo painted out in his writings).

The only other painter that I know of that has implemented such use of different varnishes for different parts of a painting is fellow follower of the Old Masters, Evert Thielen (He who -unlike me- has doubtlessly gained the level of Master) I therefore cannot claim originality on this aspect of the painting, though I had come up with the idea to use varnish in this way before I was familiar with Thielen’s work.

Pepijn, 2019

Unfortunately Pepijn was not able to apply the layers of varnish himself. So we have a challenge ahead to completely finish his Materpiece the way he intended to. To be continued…