Take Care of Your Art Painting Creation

Creating your painting probably took a lot of time and effort. Especially with oils, you put a lot of patience and dedication into that piece and probably value it a lot.

In order to make sure your painting lasts as long as possible in as good of a condition as possible, you need to take the proper steps to take care of it.

Nothing would be worse than putting all that painstaking effort into making your masterpiece, and then having it ruined by embedded dust or hairs in the paint, a saggy canvas, or even a huge rip in it should it fall or be punctured.

There are a few things you can do to make sure your painting stays as new and perfect as possible.

While it Dries

Your painting is most vulnerable while it’s drying because the paint is still sticky. Things like dust, hair, and bits of almost anything will want to stick to the surface. Also, the oils are going through special changes with the oxygen in the air in order to dry, and changes in environment will cause the oil to do different things.

So first of all, do everything possible to make sure dust doesn’t settle on your painting. Don’t leave it alone, uncovered in a room, face up for 6 months. Dust will settle on it. Instead, move it around often, clean the room it’s in, and face it vertically toward a wall, where dust is less likely to settle. Also, try to dry it in light as much as possible. When it dries in the dark, the oil wants to rise to the surface and this makes a yellow glaze on the surface of the painting.

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After it’s Dry

After it’s dry, (and this could be months or even years later) you need to varnish your painting. Varnishing protects your art creation from environmental hazards like smoke and pollution. Buy a removable varnish so that you can take it off and re-varnish the painting over time, if the varnish should start yellowing.

Two coats of varnish, one applied horizontally and one vertically are good enough to protect your painting. As a bonus, it also brightens your painting and pulls everything together a bit better.

Hanging It

After your painting is dry and varnished, you should hang it to prevent physical damage being done to it. Get a picture hanging kit from your hardware store, and screw the two eye hooks into the left and right stretcher bars, about one fourth of the way from the top.

Thread the wire through it, wrapping extra bits on the end in a corkscrew pattern around the eye hooks and give it about an inch of slack to hang on a hook. Then nail the hook into the wall and let your painting shine!

If you plan on shipping your painting to a seller, make sure to sandwich it between two flat boards so that nothing can puncture the canvas. If it does get ripped though, there are professional restorers who can help, so don’t try to fix it yourself!

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