How I Finish & Seal an Acrylic Painting

[Applause] [Music] whenever I start a new painting or a new series of paintings I always tell myself that I'm gonna mask off the sides with masking tape to stop this mess happening and I always get so excited that I don't do it so what I'm doing at the moment I've got my little sender and I'm just sending off the edges as the first thing in finishing then I will mask them off before I start sealing I'll show you have the paint in the edges sounded so they're smooth that you can still see bits of paper that won't get covered over when I paint the edges what I do now this is on a painting table so I can't really show you at all I also hold it right there but I I now just go over the whole surface of the painting looking if there any bits I don't absolutely love and there's a little bit here that's kind of something in nothing that I want to fix but here that's a bit I don't know there's something about it so this is my chance to just do any final touches and then I'm gonna start sealing it painting here I've got the camera propped up in a precarious place on my sofa so I could show you this I'll use this artist masking tape to put around the edges and it's just a case it's just the right size for these Jackson's boards which have a 20 mil cradle on them so it's just a nice fit for them and what this'll mean is if I drew when when I drew any of my ceiling stuff I use various things down the sides it what I want again if I feel miss at the beginning do as I say not as I do and I wouldn't have had to do any standing I hate sounding right so we have that sealed up so the first thing I'm going to use is this gloss medium you don't have to use gloss medium the reason why I like it this is to ceiling the paint in there initially gloss medium isn't a final finish really you can use it to mix into your paints I use it during the process to sometimes put a layer on to bring out the color more and that's why I like it at this stage because it's just once you have really lovely color that you love but put in a gloss over it will bring the colors out you can use matte if that's your preference any kind of matte finish on your paintings but a matte finish will always slightly dull the colors they're not huge darling if you want to see the difference if you want to try it out you can do some quick sketches on paper with paint and then try finishing with different in different ways and see what you prefer I'm going to show you what I like and sometimes I like the gloss finish sometimes I like a really glossy finish which isn't for everyone but I just really like it on certain paintings and I don't know where I'll end up with this one floral decide until I get to it so I'm gonna leave that now to dry and then I'll come back in and do the next layer right so I've had put two coats of gloss medium on this and I'm now gonna put some leveling gel on and I must say that none of this is essential so you could finish this paint in there with a few coats of varnish say satin varnish and it would a perfectly nice finish I like these gloss finishes because of what they bring out in the color so this is the way I'm doing it so the stuff I'm using if you can see that it acts of lighting it's called golden clear leveling gel and basically this stuff you can't put it on too thick and so a lot of what I've just put on there is gonna end up getting whiter wasted I have this trowel which I got from the hardware store just push this stuff forever the reason why what this what this stuff is made for is to even out surfaces now I'm not I'm not going to be putting enough on that it will level out the whole surface but it does even out some of the divots and things that you get in your painting so again if you don't like that this is probably not with this stuff for you what some very important with this crucial in fact is to have it on a flat surface and to not put to not put it on too thick because once I put this on when it dries it goes out on on peak but it dries perfectly clear so this is a lot of faffing it's faffing that I actually enjoy because it's kind of sealing this painting is finished in my mind if that makes any sense right so I think that's good so I'll cover it up so that's it for that one for now we'll leave it to dry in there all take the tape off do the edges and do the waxing so after took the taste off a little bit of the leveling gel and sneaked down the side so I'm just sort of quicksand on the bottom just save myself a lot of grief it's to mask off this while I'm painting the edges but I think it's worth it when you've worked so hard on paintings to finish them off properly despite that you can fill the sides I always like to choose one of the light colors that's in the painting some people have a set color that they'll use on every painting and sometimes I do use yellow ochre and white just mix it into a very light mixture but since there's so much Karki in this painting I'm mixing up a very light car key and just painting that on to the side and this is going in a frame so the truth is most of this won't be seen this now while it's wet and it's gonna pull the tape off in case any of its got on line painting and I usually do this while I'm working on the painting so I'll just leave that it all dry but just to show you when I painted all the four sides I've decided on this one that I'm not going to wipe it because I like the glossy finish but if I was going to wax it that's a very simple process any kind of any cold wax depending what country you are the different brands any cold wax is fine and all you do is take a piece of kitchen roll or a lint-free cloth you put a very small amount of cold wax on your cloth and you rub it on you cover the whole thing in cold wax you leave it for a couple of hours and then you buff it with a clean towel just rubbing over it to take to kind of bring it up to a sheen and it comes up to a really nice smooth sheen if you do that it takes the gloss of it but it leaves this lovely Sheen I just prefer it sometimes to actually have the glass but that's what I would do if it wasn't red usually the red ones that I end up leaving I have now painted the sides in this khaki color it's that for nail in the wall it's lost so this frame table this is a tray frame from great art in the UK I know you can buy these things in America but I'm not sure from where but they're called tree frames so I take my painting which is no sealed finish I personally don't sign my paintings on the front as you might have noticed I sign them on the back it's just a personal preference but it fits into the frame nicely as you can see and then what I would do I would glue that on the back so so you can see on the back here you end up with this is the wood panel here I use little spacers that I get from the hardware store that are used apparently in things like glazing they're little plastic spacers you stick them in to the front side to make it even all the way around then I get my glue gun and I just go along this seal here with glue and that's it it's this it's glue gun it's like the hot glue that when it dries then it's set and these are quite light panels and quite light frames and then I just put fixings on to here I sign the back and I have a label that I put on them that says original artwork by Louise Fletcher and then I hand dried the title into that and that finished painting video and I know sorry so yes all the spaces you could even use just get this back into place and I'll show you what you could do so you have your picture in the frame and you want obviously the same difference all the way around it so what I do for that is these little plastic spacers but what also works well is pieces of thick cardboard so these are just bits of paper but basically they're not think you know but you stick in something thick there and just if you've got something of the same thickness I know one artist who uses foam core foam board for that I just got water painting but because it's all nice and glossy it doesn't matter and so you can use foam quite anything that will just has an even but the reason I like the space is from the hardware store is they come in different widths and you can use several of them to make the exact width that you want and you know you there come in colors so you have a green one for one millimeter a blue one for two millimeters or ever so you know you get any even all the way around but that's what I do to finish your painting so I'm quite happy that that one's done anyway I've really enjoyed showing you my process and I hope it's been educational [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Louise Fletcher Art

Views: 30,626

Rating: 4.9248824 out of 5

Keywords: acrylic painting, abstract art, varnishing, how to, thispaintinglife, louise fletcher art

Id: x435LhnbrzU

Length: 12min 37sec (757 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 06 2019