Liquitex Professional Acrylic Varnish, High Gloss, 946 ml

Product Information

Today, Winsor and Newton remain the premier choice for artists, offering a wide variety of fine art supplies including: oil, water colour, acrylic and alkyd paints, pastels, artists' brushes, canvases, papers and portfolios. I’m not familiar with spraycan varnishes available in the US but unless you’re sure about what they are I would be wary about using them on an acrylic painting. They also have better optical qualities, meaning they impart better gloss and depth to the painting, although you’re unlikely to really be able to notice a difference unless you do a side-by-side comparison. Mix into any acrylic paint to enhance the depth of colour intensity, increase transparency and gloss, ease the flow of paint and add flexibility and adhesion of paint film. For spirit-based varnish the application process is simpler, you can apply it in much the same manner as above but you have more time to even out any irregularities by ‘laying off’ – light strokes with the brush tip at right angles to the direction of application – without fear of bubbles forming.

I’m looking for a smooth, wet, sexy, high-gloss look for the finished surface of some paintings but didn’t want to go the polyurethane route.Hold the brush at a shallow angle to the surface when applying varnish, not upright as you might do when painting, so that you’re laying a coat of finish on the surface of the work with most of the length of the bristles, rather than brushing it on with the tip as normal.

A thick coat will take longer to dry, may dry cloudy, may drip or sag during application and has a greater chance of showing brush strokes when dry. As much as possible try to varnish in a clean, warm and dry environment; an uncarpeted room is much better, it really does make a difference. I used to just use gloss medium as the varnish but was told that coating the surface of the painting with that was a bad idea since it can not be removed. The texture of your painting could also have something to do with it as both macroscopic and microscopic texture affect apparent gloss. Anyone who has ever used Epifanes Clear High Gloss Clear Varnish will tell you why it is considered to be the world’s best spar varnish.

In the former case you have to be careful to prevent friction which leads to the formation of bubbles which can dry inside the varnish layer and are impossible to remove.