repainting existing work

using a mixture of damar disolved in a turp substitute and walnut oil, i greased up an old painting with fine composition and subject matter but lackluster color. i then proceeded to repaint using straight pigment (the surface being covered with medium already). the end result is a brilliantly colored piece with great coverage. did i just stumble upon something everybody already knew about? a great excercise I might add for a day when one wants to paint but isn't up to the job of working something more demanding/serious.

Yes, you did. Not every painter do this, but many do. You are basically coating the painting with a medium before painting on it. This is especially useful for painting on passages wherein the paints have soaked in, therefore drying to a matte finish.

Interesting, probably not very archival, but then who cares, right?

Mixing the damar and the medium (oil) seems to be a mistake as the damar is to be used as an isolating layer or a varnish. But I can't speak as to the results of such an action. I know artists who 'oil out' the canvas with the medium but you shouldn't do it as an end layer, because with no pigment it will yellow sooner.

Jane
http://www.geocities.com/teslathemothgod

I don't know. When the damar/solvent/oil was applied it softened the existing paint to such a point that it would come off if scratched or scrubbed (as when I picked little pieces of foreign matter off the canvas with my finger nail or small brush) which leads me to believe the new paint will bind with the innitial paint perhaps.

It would seem the oil would mix with the pigments as per usual (or else the pigment I applied would not have covered so successfully). No, I wouldn't want to add oil to a final varnish.