Punching Up

this video is brought to you by surfshark secure your digital life and gain private access to the open internet you know i was studying studio arts in college i had this professor who had this saying that big isn't better it's just better and he was referring to this idea that scale matters and that if a painting isn't compelling because of its content or narrative then it's easily dismissed but if it's physical presence is monumental well then it's a force with which we must reckon and that approach works for some paintings take this large mary abbott abstract expressionist piece behind me it's gigantic it's monumental it fills your field of vision it is an all-encompassing experience to encounter it it works but for some works that need to foster a sense of closeness or intimacy big isn't going to work in fact small is the recipe for success and i can think of no better example than this diminutive portrait on copper fitting nearly in the palm of my hand this painting is easily dismissed but i suspect once cleaned we'll find that it packs a wallop that it's punching up [Music] now though it is small it has some pretty big problems it's obviously very very filthy you can see a layer of varnish in the forehead in addition the paint is flaking pretty much everywhere it's detached from the support which is copper if you hadn't noticed not canvas or wood so that presents a unique challenge to say nothing of the losses and the incredibly tiny retouching that will be required now this painting is completely concealed and my job will be to reveal it and make it accessible kind of like how surf shark does that with online content with surfshark you can unlock and get access to content libraries from netflix bbc iplayer hulu and others as a cyclist i love to watch professional bike racing but here in america it's almost nowhere to be found and so i use surfshark so that i can access races from all over the world and keep up with my favorite sport and surfshark is pretty great because one subscription allows you to install it on an unlimited number of devices and they have an app for just about everything pc mac linux android ios smart tvs amazon fire stick apple tv chrome firefox xbox and playstation and with surfshark your online activity is protected from the prying eyes of governments corporations and even hackers surf shark also has a 30-day money-back guarantee so you can try it out and see if you like it no strings attached so check out surfshark.deals restoration and enter the promo code restoration for get this 83 off and an extra three no no four months for free i mean you're basically stealing it from them now unlike some projects i'm going to jump right in and start cleaning this painting as the first step and the reason for that will become evident in a little bit don't worry i'll explain it later on and you'll notice that i'm using actual swabs here yes the swabs that i use to make tests on paintings this is a tiny painting and so i need tiny swabs there is a temptation to grab a handful of cotton balls saturate them with solvent and wipe off everything in one fell swoop it would take what 15 or 20 seconds and i'd be done except that's not how it gets done because all of the paint is really unstable and much of it has started to flake off i need to be really careful with how i clean this painting and using small swabs allows me to have extra control in addition i don't want to expose this painting to too much solvent so keeping the amount of solvent to a minimum is absolutely critical and i do that by using a very very small swab it can only hold so much solvent after all now another thing that i have to be mindful of particularly because this paint is flaking is how i clean the painting and on the collar where there was no flaking paint i could just rub the swab on the varnish and lift it off but in the areas where the paint is actively flaking well i can't do that because the friction will take up some of that paint and that would be damaged and that's something i don't want to risk so i'm rolling the swab the solvent will break down the varnish and make it soluble and then the act of rolling the swab on top of that now soft varnish will force it to be picked up or absorbed by the swab and so this is a technique that while painstaking and tedious is absolutely critical for paintings where the paint layer is really vulnerable now i don't do this often because i can stabilize the paint layer with other approaches things like impregnations or washi cozo but here this painting is on copper so i can't saturate the back of it with an impregnation and stabilize all of this loose paint film in one fell swoop it's just not possible now the reason that i am removing this old varnish layer now first is precisely so that i can stabilize this paint layer but in order to stabilize the paint layer i have to get the varnish off because this varnish is not only on top of this layer of paint it is also on top of the raw exposed copper you see at some point in the past this painting was varnished over in an attempt to stabilize it which is something that is not all that uncommon but completely feckless it has no efficacy simply applying a surface coating on top of a painting doesn't do much to stabilize it now i suppose if the surface coating was a centimeter thick layer of epoxy that would stabilize it but we would have a whole bunch of other problems so this varnish layer was somebody's attempt at preventing any further losses and i'm not sure that it was at all effective and take a look at the forehead of the sitter you see that ridge that goes from the left down to his right ear well that's actual varnish it was applied so thickly that it dripped or sagged as it was drying so i'm gonna have to remove all of that now without a doubt one of my favorite things to clean is a portrait sure landscapes are wonderful and seeing a bright blue sky come out of yellow haze is always fun and interesting and abstract paintings are always exciting because there is a world of color concealed beneath all of that grime and sometimes old varnish but portraits are people and people have personalities and so when i start to clean off one of these portraits well i start to see who this sitter is not only because i can actually see the colors of their face the brush work that defined those features and the artist's mastery in executing them but i can also start to see the sitter's expression and that starts to make me wonder about who the sitter was why they were being painted and what kind of lives they've lived now unlike so many portraits whose sitters remain anonymous we actually know who this was because the owner of the painting shared that information this is franz wilhelm von wartenberg he was a bavarian catholic bishop and he lived from 1593 to 1661 and so this portrait was probably painted towards the mid or end of his life so maybe 1630 to 1650 give or take these small portraits sometimes were framed and kept in homes and sometimes they were lockets that were worn around people's necks imagine that wearing a little painting around your neck it's so cute and quaint and pretty wonderful actually i'd like to see it come back in any event what makes this painting really great is its scale and i mentioned that early on that to view the painting you have to get really close to it literally right up next to it and that lends itself to a sense of intimacy which makes this painting really special now earlier i mentioned that the varnish was applied probably in an attempt to stabilize this painting prevent it from flaking anymore unfortunately when that was done it was done on top of a layer of surface grime the painting had never been properly cleaned before that varnish was applied so i need to remove that layer of grime now using an old retouching brush that is no longer suitable for retouching it's all frayed and can't keep a point i've applied a paste to the surface of the painting and using that brush i'm going to agitate that paste and it's going to start breaking down that surface grime once it's allowed to sit and broke down that surface grime enough i can come back with a damp or moistened swab and start to lift off that surface grime and it may take a couple of applications of this paste to get all of this grime off but you can see it is coming off now with such a small painting it does not require a ton of time to get it fully cleaned but that doesn't mean that i can again use a larger brush or use a faster approach i have to treat this painting just like it were a big painting only smaller and as i remove all of that surface grime well there are subtleties that are coming up the red is not so orange it's more crimson obviously the collar is a little bit brighter and the background itself isn't dark brown and black it's got some blues and greens in it these are all things that were completely concealed by the surface grime and the old varnish things that maybe i'm seeing for the first time in 100 200 years now with all of the surface grime and the old varnish removed i can start dealing with the copper and i have to get off the layer of oxidation so i'm using an oxidation remover to well remove it and you can see it works very very fast it's taking off that layer and revealing the pure copper underneath and this is absolutely critical because anything that i try to bond to this copper to fill in the missing voids will just bond with the layer of oxidation and that makes it vulnerable or fallible it could flake off in the future i need to have raw copper the real metal and so now with all of that oxidation removed you can see just how bright it is and i may have to do this a couple of times but that's okay i want the raw metal exposed of course removing all of that oxidation reveals something that i kind of expected there are still areas of varnish that weren't fully removed when i removed the varnish you can see on the right side some little brown speckling in the area of the copper and that's old varnish that didn't get fully removed and of course it needs to be removed not only because i don't want to bond something to that varnish layer but because under it is more oxidation so i'll take a swab with some solvent and just go over those areas where i didn't fully remove the varnish on the first pass and you can see there isn't much but it needs to come off and once i get all of this old varnish off i'll make another pass with the oxidization remover and i'll be done so now we can start talking about stabilizing this paint layer i mentioned that i couldn't do an impregnation from the back because the copper is solid material and i can't saturate from the back so i'm applying a heated up and thinned out adhesive to the painting on the front kind of everywhere i'm not being terribly delicate here because i don't need to be this is removable and i will remove almost all of it including the residue and even some from the raw copper this is thinned out and heated up and i'm hoping that it will penetrate underneath the areas of lifting paint now at this point i would generally head over to my hot table to deal with the adhesive but my hot tables are big and bigger and this painting is small and i see no reason to heat up the entire table just for this small painting it's really not that pleasant to work over 150 degree table for all that long so i'm using a small silicone heating pad and once it reaches temperature 150 degrees or so i can place the copper on top of it and let the adhesive melt and if you watch closely you can see the adhesive change from a matte to a shiny there it is now the adhesive is active and ready to be spread with the assistance of a silicone spatula and silicone pet film basically i don't want anything sticking i'm going to press down the areas of lifting paint and what i'm hoping is that the adhesive will be forced underneath those voids now a little piece of felt is also necessary because 150 degrees while not terribly hot isn't very pleasant on my fingertips and i need those things for my work anyhow forcing the adhesive underneath those voids and then pressing the paint layer down will allow me to bond it down to the copper and this silicone spatula is doing a fine job but i'm gonna also switch to a small balsa wood brayer of sorts now it's been rounded on the edge and it's balsa wood so it's fairly soft and i'm just rubbing over the paint layer not with too much force just enough to encourage it to go flat i want as much contact as possible and once i have gotten the entire painting flat and gone over it i will take the painting off of the silicone heat pad and put it onto the steel which will hold the temperature for a little bit longer and allow the painting to cool a little bit more naturally once it's fully cool i can start removing the excess adhesive with a solvent i can roll over the entire painting and the adhesive will start to swell and i can lift it off with the swab now the areas where the paint was lifting and where the adhesive was forced under well those aren't accessible to this solvent anymore because of course the paint layer is now flat and bonded down to the copper so i'm just removing the excess and this solvent evaporates pretty quickly and once it does you'll be able to see that there is no adhesive residue left on the painting kind of neat huh now with all of the old varnish and oxidation removed i can start to prepare the raw copper for the fill in now this raw copper won't accept the fill in medium it just won't stick to it it may temporarily but inevitably it's going to flake off so i have to use some sort of in-between medium to facilitate that bond and i'm using a synthetic resin i'm using a very small brush one that i use for retouching to paint on this resin just on the raw copper i don't really want to get it all over the paint if i do get a little bit i can remove it but i'd rather be neat on the first application than have to go and try to remove it because inevitably some of what i'm putting on the copper might get lifted up and that would create a weak spot now this resin is going to allow the fill in medium to bond it will accept that fill in medium well and this resin bonds really well to copper it's been lab tested and studied and shown to be a good material to force bonding onto copper thus far my entire attention has been focused on the front of this painting but now i'm going to turn to the back because it deserves attention too just as i remove the oxidation from the front of the copper i want to remove it from the back leaving it isn't the end of the world and i could very easily just say so be it but i'd like to clean it up and make sure that the copper is well preserved so using the same solution that i did on the front i can remove the oxidation from the back and it may take a couple of passes because this has been exposed for longer but after i have hit the back a couple of times we can see that the copper is pretty good looking actually there are some areas of pitting but i'm not terribly concerned about those this isn't the showpiece i just want to make sure that the oxidation is off i could certainly sand and polish this if i wanted a mirror finish but that's not what the client wants and it doesn't seem to provide any benefit now just as i coated the front with a resin i'm coating the back of this as well and here it's not to enable a fill-in medium to bond to the copper here it's to protect the copper so it doesn't oxidize again this copper is now exposed to the elements and if left untreated it will oxidize and all the work that i've done will be moot so this resin will protect it so now after all of that to do about the copper removing the oxidation the old varnish and preparing it for the filling i could fill it in this is probably the least amount of fill-in i have ever had to put on a painting but also maybe the highest percentage of fill-in per square inch on a painting it's no different than applying it to a big painting i'm using the same palette knife and the same fill-in and the same approach but basically the entire piece has to get covered there's so many little areas of loss and again this is a tiny painting so it's going to be looked at up close all of these need to be filled in otherwise we'll have divots now once that fill and medium has been allowed to dry over about a day i can come back and remove the excess because let's be honest here i've basically iced over the entire painting using a dampened swab i can apply a little bit of moisture to the filling medium and allow it to swell and soften up and then lift it off of the painting surface with that swab and as i do this if the fill in medium stays if it sticks to that resin coating well then it's been work that's good it's precisely what i want to have happen now an old printmaking technique that i love to employ when removing any fill and medium or anything from the surface to use the meat of my hand and in small circular motions kind of buff it clean it's amazing what will stick to your hands and how they can be used as sandpaper really and now onto the epic task of retouching this tiny painting and because this painting is tiny and my easel is not i have fashioned a holder of sorts for it out of acid-free foam core a couple of strips have been cut for the top and the bottom and some double sided tape will hold it into place and even though my palette looks like a hot mess all of these retouching paints can be reactivated with exposure to solvent so every one of these colors is still usable and it's nice to have a palette with a lot of different colors pre-mixed because it shortens the amount of time it takes me to get to the color i want if i have a color already on the palette i simply need to reactivate it and adjust it as opposed to having to start from scratch it's a nice shortcut it doesn't make me a better retoucher but it is a time-saving technique that you know over one painting doesn't really matter but over the course of hundreds upon hundreds of paintings it can add up and i'd like to save as much time as possible where possible now logic may dictate that a small painting would require less time less focus less energy than a large painting to retouch simply put there's just less retouching so it should take less time well yes to a degree it does take less time certainly when there is a massive amount of retouching there's just a lot of retouching to cover but small paintings require almost more effort to retouch you see give me that big abstract expressionist painting from the beginning of the video drive a truck through it and i can retouch it in minutes and nobody will ever notice it the painting is huge there's so much going on there's colors there's texture there's brushwork there are plenty of distractions not to mention there's just so much painting that it's easy to lose track of small defects but a small painting one that fits in the palm of your hand one that may be worn on a necklace well that's going to be examined closely and so every little aspect needs to pass a different level of scrutiny certainly the main issues are color and form and making sure that the image holds up and that's not any different than any other retouching but with a really tiny painting like this one well one has to make sure that upon really close inspection everything just looks normal and that big abstract expressionist painting well when we view it we view it from 10 15 feet away you have to it's so big but a small painting like this well you are viewing it from inches away and look at a forest from a half a mile away and you just see a mass of green but get closer and you start to see the trees and then the leaves and then the veins on the leaves and then the little aphids eating the leaves the point being that as a painting gets smaller the viewer's attention becomes more focused more refined and with that level of scrutiny we have to make sure that the retouching will live up to that bar now all told this retouching probably took about 30 minutes or so which is not particularly long but not all that fast for the scale of this work in comparison the retouching on that large abstract expressionist piece well it may have taken two hours altogether but when you take all the losses that were on that abstract expressionist piece they were about 10 times the size of this little painting so it just goes to show that scale can play tricks on us in other ways so it just goes to show that while scale is important for the artist and the viewer it also has an effect on the conservator and the way that they work so with all of that retouching done i am now ready to go on to varnishing and this painting is going to be varnished just like every other painting i varnish except well just a little bit differently instead of using my big four inch brush i'm using a one inch brush simply because it's easier the four inch brush yeah one pass would do it but this only takes a couple of passes and i have more control using a small brush back and forth up and down and that's it the varnishing is all done piece of cake so while this painting was small it had some big issues the substrate was copper there was flaking paint there was heavily distorted and textured paint tons of old varnish meant to stabilize the paint and a lot of surface grime that needed to be removed but approaching it with care and attention and a few variations on the theme well the results are fantastic so just because a painting is small doesn't mean that the work required will be a measure less nor that the piece itself has less impact i mean let's remember the other saying that great things come in small packages you

Channel: Baumgartner Restoration

Views: 624,639

Keywords: Baumgartner, Julian, restoration, ASMR, paintings, cleaning, scraping, repair, Art, fine art, conservation, painting restoration, old art, painting, painting conservation, oil painting, new again, restore

Id: GEjErW6dEXU

Length: 26min 0sec (1560 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 22 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Silverseren]

Miniature paintings have always fascinated me. All the different kinds of miniature art always have (remember that guy that makes carvings out of pencil eraser ends?).

It's also astonishing that such a tiny painting could have gotten so grimy. It's even more extreme than the massive ones.

[u/Machopeanut]

Wow, super good. Thanks for sharing!!