[Jody]

Hi George,

I’m slowly making progress on my varnish disaster. With a lot of patience and Shellsol A, I’m finally getting back to square one. I think I’m ready to take the varnishing course and I attempted to purchase it yesterday, Order #14019, but once again the link did not arrive. I’m not sure what I have messed up in my profile that I have such a hard time with the links, but in any case would you please send it along? I would greatly appreciate it.

Kind regards,

Jody

[Jody]

Hi George,

Thanks for your help. Absolutely, I will watch the cleaning course as the link has now arrived, and rest assured the importance of cleaning the painting before varnishing has sunk in well and good. I will also be taking the course on varnishes before attempting it again, I previously took the “oiling out and sinking in” module which was very informative.

Unfortunately I still have a void when it comes to what type of solvents to use to prepare the resins I have already purchased. I would have loved to have simply purchased the Rublev Isolating varnish already prepared, but it isn’t available on the EU site and I am located in Italy. Unfortunately there aren’t any solvents available either, aside from Spike oil, so that I could have purchased the properly labeled solvent, in fact there are no solvent based products at all on the EU website; I’m assuming the EU bureaucracy was more headache than it was worth. I went ahead and purchased the Regalrez and Laropal resins, along with the tinuvin, assuming I would be able to find a recipe online but that is proving more difficult than I had imagined. Would you be so kind as to tell me what type of solvent I should procure so that I have the possibility of preparing the varnish myself. I realize that the recipes are relatively loose, but a general idea of where to start would be greatly appreciated. As you can imagine, after the last disaster I’m pretty gun-shy about the whole process, but it would be a pity if I end up learning nothing from my mistake.

Kind regards,

Jody

[Jody]

Hi Michael,

Thanks for the info on Shellsol A. I did email back the technical advisor at Kremer immediately hoping she could clarify for me the type of solvent I should use to remove the Paraloid B72 varnish, she has yet to respond.

you hit the nail on the head with the pouring and spreading of the varnish, that’s exactly what I did. There are as I mentioned two coats in those flakes, but obviously I’ve displayed my complete ignorance in varnishing, so your advice to thin it out is accepted wholeheartedly. I had an incredibly difficult time finding any information on the internet as to what solvents should be used with what resins, and so in my doubt I didn’t want to dilute them. Like I mentioned earlier, even Natural Pigments failed to respond when I emailed asking what solvent to use to dilute the regalrez and laropal resins I purchased from their site.

I’m thinking at this point to remove as much of the varnish as possible by making it flake moving the painting. It can’t be very good for the paint, but perhaps less damaging than harsh solvents, then I’m hoping I can move to solvents to get the remaining areas.

I’ll have to email tech support and get the link for the “cleaning class”. While it won’t be of much use to me now, always good to have a bit more knowledge.

[Jody]

Thanks so much for your help. I used the brushable Sennelier “Gloss picture varnish” which I have used in the past and have never had any trouble. Of course I attempted to get fancy and that’s when I messed things up royally.

The brand of Paraloid B72 that I used is by Kremer pigments, it is a 15% solution in Ethylacetate. I contacted them to see what they advised and their conservator was very puzzled as to why I would use a “metal varnish” on a picture, thinking the lack of adhesion had nothing to do with the open time but with the fact that it’s a HMW varnish and not a LMW varnish as one should use to varnish a painting. It was my desire to even the surface of the painting which caused my adventures with Paraloid, which I have no want to every repeat again.

If “real turpentine” works to remove the Sennelier, will that also work to remove the Paraloid b72? And just like that I’ve realized the difficulties created for the conservator when we use two different types of resin. The technical advisor at Kremer advised against using aroma free mineral spirits saying Paraloid doesn’t “tolerate” it and would make a horrible mess. She mentioned Shellsol A as a diluent, but I’m not sure whether or not this is safe to clean the painting, and if so how long should I wait to revarnish? I attempted to purchase the tutorial on cleaning a painting from this website, and while it had no problem accepting my payment that doesn’t seem to be working for me either right now…. rough day in the studio.