How Do You Paint Over Something In Oils ?????????????

Hey Folks,

I was just wondering, say you make an oil painting that doesn't turn out right, and then you wanna do it over again, what do you do to paint over the already dried paint?

I've used a small amount of Liquin with white, and it just doesn't seem to cover very well, even with 2-3 coats or so. And i have to add some liquin, or out of the tube would take too long to dry.

This is probably only a problem with those of us who paint rather thinly; if i was a thicker painter (more opaque), i wouldn't have this problem. I mean, if the whole painting is painted thinly, then the thickly painted spot (where i covered something up) tends to remove the texture of the canvas, and it can be a bit obvious upon closer inspection.

But let's say i wanna keep on painting thinly, it seems my only real success was when i stretched a new canvas (can't re-gesso the old painting, or course)!

I guess maybe i just have to do more coats....

Slick

it's very hard, especially if you like the texture of the canvas while painting. you can use a little medium and brush or wipe the canvas down which gives it a slick feel and allows you to work upon the already painted canvas. this works best if you are reworking the previous image as otherwise the background image will be distracting. or if you know a piece isn't working i suggest wiping as much paint off the canvas as poss. as soon as possible to allow room for another painting. at that point you could paint right onto the canvas or perhaps add a pigment you would like to work over. good luck.

You might try overpainting in neutral grey which has a better coverage than pure white.

Mike Thompson

I don't know if you do that - but if not - you rather sand down the old paint before you apply new. Use paper with the finest grains until you are down to the canvas. You won't be able to remove all the old paint, but it will cover much better.

Like %18 grey from photography?

I'll try it sometime.

Slick

Yeah, well, i've heard of people scraping paint off a canvas too.

But doing this or sanding it, doesn't the canvas fibers get exposed? I mean don't you remove the gesso ground too?

Ok, maybe you use extremely fine sandpaper, and only sand off the top layers of paint, perhaps leaving the bottom layers, and never touch the gesso. ?

This sounds like something i might try with thicker layers, but with an oil sketch, well, you are already at the gesso anyways. Maybe sanding a bit of the gesso off wouldn't hurt.

As such, it's no problem to sand down the surface of a canvas. You can do that while gessoing if you want to remove loose ends of the weavery (there are always small dots in the weavery) and make the surface smoother. You can also sand down the surface after applying the last layer of gesso, and paint on the sanded surface, without any problems.

How much I would sand down to remove paint, depends somewhat upon the quality of the canvas and how it is prepared. You just have to be a litle lighthanded and you will see how much you get away with.

If you remove paint, mostly you will have to clean the canvas after sanding. It's a not a good thing to soak the canvas in solvents. Therefore, I use a dry rag to wipe away the loose paint after sanding - take away as much as possible with the rag. Then I take a little bit of water on a rag to clean the canvas completely for paint, but you might prefer some solvent.

Thanks for the tips Miriam, i'll try them.

Slick

Sanding is a good way to keep paintings from becoming overworked, and also it helps to unify things. I get very aggressive with it-but I wouldn't sand it if I painted with lead! : o

Jane

That's an interesting idea for unifying the painting, I'll have to try it the next time things ar screwing up. So it may be soon. Right now a favourite technique is just to coat the whole thing in raw umber, thinning ot thickening the umber according to what I want to keep, and what I don't. It's an entertaining process, because after yu've coated the picture, you get to extract it from the darkenss...

Cheers;