Make your next artwork pop by adding a lustrous finish and watch the colours come to life. Follow along the step-by-step video demonstration applying satin varnish to acrylic paintings, exploring handy hints and pitfalls to avoid that will save you time and money with loads of detail. (full video)
Welcome to my detailed demonstration with learning points on how to varnish your next acrylic artwork with satin finish varnish.
Learn tips to help you avoid common varnishing pitfalls and cloudy marks.
I’ve included a few extra gems in the summary below that outlines the process. The video goes into loads of details, perfect for the beginner and those needing a refresher. There is a full video transcript at the bottom of the page.
Not everyone chooses to varnish. I only varnish some of my works and in the video I explain why I’m choosing to varnish these artworks. My decision-making process may help you decide how to finish your artworks, it may not.
A quick look at varnishing acrylic paintings
Why varnish?
- Protect your work from dust and dirt
- Bring out the colours and highlight contrasts
- Add luster
Products and Equipment
Clear Glaze Medium: Seals acrylic artwork, prevents colour or pigment lift off into varnish and thus colour smearing across artwork; possible isolation coat advantage when removing varnish.
Satin Finish Varnish: Not matte and not full gloss, gives a nice sheen and luminesce to artwork without being too shiny. Can put a gloss or matte over the top if not happy with the result.
Clean thick brush or cloth to remove dirt and dust
Painters or masking tape for edges (optional)
Clear Glaze medium designated brush
Clean bowl that hasn’t being used for painting
Varnish designated brush
Deciding on the Varnish
Trial and error process
May not want to varnish at all. See my post on cold wax as a varnish (coming soon) for something a little different.
I like to satin or gloss varnish contemporary artworks that are full of colour or have big contrasts of light and dark. I feel that the colours really pop and a shine can give great luster to the work.
It’s up to you which one you want to use and not all varnishes may suit your style of art.
You can always put a different layer over the top afterwards, for example if satin isn’t shiny enough you can apply a gloss over the top.
Pitfalls
Most varnishes cannot be removed but stay tuned as I experiment with this.
Solution: test varnish out on similar pieces or on a piece you are not selling, displaying.
Preparing your artwork
Clean dry thick brush to brush of any dirt or dust, animal hair etc
Could also use a slightly damp clean cloth to wipe away visible dirt
Tape the sides with masking or painters’ tape so that the sides can be painted on later if needed. This step is optional and when framing your work, you don’t need to varnish the sides. Wrap around edges may need varnish too. It’s a personal choice.
Apply Clear Glaze Medium
Using a clear glaze medium designated brush apply clear glaze medium undiluted and a thin layer. Always follow the instructions on the product. May look cloudy or white on application but will dry clear and shiny.
May want to work with the brushstrokes of your work to avoid any lumps of pooling.
Your brush may pick up some colour. For this artwork, I washed my brush out between paintings.
Try painting the lighter parts firsts to avoid spreading pigment around your work.
The clear glaze medium will seal your work so that the colour doesn’t lift off when varnishing.
Make sure you let your artwork cure for 72 hours or more before using a clear glaze medium and follow the instructions on the product.
In a warm climate may only take an hour to dry if applied as a thin layer.
Apply Satin Varnish – Coat 1
Clean bowl and use designated varnish brush.
Use undiluted or follow instructions on product.
Don’t shake or apply so quickly that air bubbles form. These will pop and leave indents in your finished product.
Apply evenly with brush. May want to apply in the direction of brush strokes. Some like to use circular motions to apply varnish, starting from one end and moving to the other. Very difficult to get perfectly even coat. The second coat can fix and smooth out any uneven parts.
If you’ve applied varnish and you’ve walked away and it’s started to dry, and you notice a part you missed – STOP! Do not apply more varnish to drying coat. The parts that already had varnish and are still wet-ish will not dry clear and may appear cloudy when fully dry. If this happens, wait for the entire work to dry before applying more coats of varnish.
Leave for a minimum of an hour depending on temperature of area your working in or follow instructions on product.
Apply Satin Varnish – Coat 2
May need more varnish to cover the same sized area over the first coat.
May need more time to dry
Will possibly take up to 72 hours to cure fully. See instructions on product.
Watch out for any drips and drop. We don’t want them to dry.
Finished product
Shining and colours are popping. Could put a third coat on or a coat of gloss.
Remove tape from edges. Will show matte edges.
Place in frames.
Please note: Any products shown in this video are not affiliated with me or my brand. I make no money from their promotion. They are just products I use that I like and I make no claims that they are right for you or your work.
Video Transcript
Hi, Janet here.
I want to take you through varnishing your work today.
I’m going to have a go at finishing off a piece, that I did not so long ago. This is the one here, pretty bright, so I really want to bring the colour out, highlight it, make it the feature. So, I want to take you through a process I’m going to do with this one involving a number of steps, so I’m going to be using a clear glaze medium and this one, I have been told, if you put it on before you put the varnish on, it makes it [the varnish] removable. I haven’t tried that one out, I will try it with another video but I’m going to put this one on first and then for this piece, I think I’m going to use a satin finish, so it’s not fully matte, not high gloss but somewhere in between. It should have a really nice sheen to it. Here I have the matte and the satin and gloss but I’m going with the satin today. And see how that looks. I can always add a gloss layer too if I need to, if I feel like it’s not really popping enough.
In this video, we’re going to go through what you need to do to prepare the area so I’ve decided on the finish I want, uhm, and then we’re going to put the clear glaze medium on, which is optional and then I’m going to run you through a couple of coats, we’re going to have a look at the finished product and this little project is part of a series of three, a triptych and I’ve got little frames that we can look at, at the end. So, enjoy!
So we’re ready to get started. We’re going to prepare this guy first as the first one I’m doing out of the three. I’ve just got a clean, dry big brush and I’m, literally, it’s dry there’s nothing on it, I’m just removing any excess dust, dirt. This one was done recently, so it’s pretty clean, you might even need a slightly damp cloth to clean away anything. I’m going to start today by taping the sides. Now, you don’t have to tape the sides, you could just varnish the whole lot. So, these sides, I’m just attaching the tape, not even flush to the very end. The reason I’m doing this is it can be really tricky to paint over varnish, sometimes you get a certain effect that way, a very illuminous effect by putting on layers of glaze and varnish and then painting over it and doing the same again, can be pretty impressive as a look, but for the edges, I just want the option of being able to paint them easily later on if I need to. So, they’re going into a little frame, which is great, but if for any reason I need to take them out of that frame and hang them without, I can paint a nice block colour on the edge. So, I’m going to keep going and tape the sides of all three and then we’ll look at applying our clear glaze medium.
So, we’ve taped all the edges up of each piece and the tape I’ve used is just regular old masking tape. I picked it up from a hardware store. I think house painters use it. It’s nothing flash, nothing special. So they’re all taped up now, ready to go and that’s optional, you don’t have to do that.
So, we’re onto the clear glaze medium now, I use this one but there are all sorts of brand that do a great clear glaze medium. I’m using a very clean bowl, the cleanest I can find and I’ve given it another clean, and I actually use brushes specifically for glazing and varnishing. This is because the varnish will find any pigment that might be on the brush or in the container and it will spread it across your work. If there’s a tiny bit of red on a brush, it will pick it up and you’ll see it somewhere else in your work, where you don’t want it. So, I only use my varnish brush for varnish and my clear glaze brushes for clear glaze and then that way I know there’s been no pigment added and it’s not going to discolour the clear glaze or the varnish as it goes on. I’ve found this very important as a step. Because we’re finishing our work, not creating an effect with a pigmented clear glaze medium, so that’s important.
So, I’m going to add some medium to my bowl and this is going to dry really thin so I don’t want a thick layer. It’s undiluted for this particular brand. You have to read the instructions for each brand. And as you can see, it has a whitening effect over the coloured parts. We’ll just come over here, over the darker bits. You can kind of see, it’s just putting down a layer of, looks like white but it will dry clear. So don’t be alarmed if it’s coming up whitish. (I just found a little thing in that one – whisper)
I’m not being too careful and going in different directions for this one because the paint has been applied in all sorts of different directions too. And it’s important to find a brush that doesn’t shed. You might need to keep some tweezers handy if you’re not familiar with the brush.
And you can see, I’ve already picked up a little bit of colour from this one. So, this clear glaze is going to help us seal it [colours in the painting] so we don’t lose that colour in subsequent varnishing as well.
So you can see what’s been done and what hasn’t by the shine but usually I start at a certain point and work my way down. Today, just to illustrate those darker points and how it looks I’ve gone a bit ‘off-piest’. Make sure it’s completely covered.
Nice thin layer, not too complicated. I’m going to wash my brush out and continue on with others.
So before we continue on, I just wanted to show you how much colour has been picked up. So I cleaned this out before every new clear glaze application for each one and it’s picking up quite a bit of colour. A couple of reasons, could be for this as well is that I needed to leave it [the painting] to cure a bit longer. It’s only been a couple of days. Probably best to leave it 72 hours or more.
So that gives you an idea that you will pick up some of the colour if it’s not properly dried and cured. This is with acrylics and I just wanted to show you how much is picked up there. But, don’t get too concerned if it [your painting] has had plenty of time to cure and you still pick up a little bit of colour off your acrylic work.
So, what I did in that last painting, knowing that I’m picking up quite a bit of the stronger colour, I clear glazed the lighter parts first and then went over the darker bits, that way I wouldn’t be smearing the darker colour into the light and keep it all nice and clean that way.
Okay so we’re back now. We’ve got our clear glaze medium that has dried. I find that it’s not that hot, not that cold today about 20 degrees Celsius. It’s dried in about half an hour. I can really run my hand over it, there’s no sticky parts and you can tell the wet bits from the dry bits in the light. So that seems about ready.
I’ve got my satin varnish, I’ve cleaned the bowl and used a kitchen towel, scraping it through, checking for any colour that might be left behind and I’ve got my varnish brush that I don’t use for any of my painting pigments. I don’t want to be spreading weird and wonderful colours through this one even though it’s got a weird and wonderful look on its own, we want to keep that.
I haven’t put much in here, so I’m going to but some more in and I’ve seen some people pour the varnish onto their work and then just spread it around with the brush. I tend to be a bit more conservative. I’m holding it [bowl with varnish] over the painting and I’m going to start one end. You can see that coming into view. I’m starting with my lighter sections, up the top here. I’m doing a bit of crisscross. Now for some of my work that has really definite brush strokes, the brushstrokes are going a particular direction. For those ones, I actually put the varnish on with the brushstrokes but for this one today, it’s actually a real mixture of brushstrokes. I’ve used some free flow acrylics, there’s not really a set pattern or direction. I’m just doing a bit of a crisscross- y action. I want to cover the entire piece not leave any bits out and be quite generous. I’m loading up my brush.
What you don’t want to do is let it dry a bit and go over it again, this can leave you with a really cloudy finish on the varnish. Particularly noticeable on the darker parts. So you want to keep it all wet, don’t go over sections if you don’t need to.
Great, so it’s been over an hour. It says [varnish instructions] a minimum of an hour between coats. This is our first coat and it will be finer. It will probably be uneven. Very difficult to get it even on the first go but I’m already really happy with the colour that’s popping. It’s looking pretty cool and I don’t know if you noticed that when I was putting the varnish on, colour wasn’t being picked up and put onto the brush and that’s because of that clear glaze medium that we applied first. It really sealed it. I’m just going to turn this one around.
Got our satin varnish again, this is for coat Two. It might take longer to dry; this coat and you’ve got to be very careful when you’re checking it’s dry because you don’t want to leave any drag marks if there are some parts not quite set and then you drag the varnish around. So again, for this part here, I’ve got a lot of brushstroke-y angles so I’m just following that pattern. You just want to be careful you don’t leave any big drips behind. You know, when I’m like this and I’m moving it across and with a big dollop of varnish, I don’t want to have drips anywhere else on my work. Particularly important for those bigger pieces, this smaller one I can see where they are and fix it as I’m going. So nice, same technique as before, I’m slapping it over the edges. I’ve got that tape there, so that’ll be removed at the end.
Okay, so where back. I’ve waited 24 hours for this one to really cure, although it dried fairly quickly but I’ve left it that extra bit of time just to harden and seal. And I have to say, I’m pretty impressed with the result. I’ve a light source, a couple of light sources and you can see the sheen. Not super high gloss or anything. It’s just kind of there as I rotate around. The colours are really popping. I’m really happy with those.
So pretty happy with the effect. Looking at it, I could put another coat of the satin on again really add another layer to that or I could put on a coat of gloss over the top and really shine it up. I think these colours lend themselves and the way that I’ve done them to a higher gloss as well. And it really is, when you’ve done the work, and see what fits best and it’s trial and error when you start as well. So have a play with it, it’s really good fun. So…
What I’m going to do now is I’m going to pop them in their frames shortly but I’ve still got my tape on [the edges] so, I’m going to take the tape off. Don’t know if you can see the shiny edge and then a very matte surface. I’m just going to go ahead and remove that masking tape and get ready to pop them in the frames.
Please note: there are many ways to varnish an artwork. This is the method I use and tailored to suit these particular art pieces. You may find the techniques used here not suitable for the effect you want.