Cleaning Oil On Canvas Paintings

Series Summary

Painting is the art of using a pigmented medium to create a picture of reality filtered through the imagination, the senses, emotions and life experience. Artists the world over have multiplied the uses of painting as a vital mode of human expression, whether recording history, retelling myth and legend, expressing religious fervor, or exploring the unknown. From early history to the present there are records of men and women making graphic representations of their world, showing their understanding and their curiosity. In this free video on painting, a professional artist discusses acrylic and oil painting tips. Learn about stretching, customizing and priming canvases for painting, and find out how to use both oils and acrylics. Get basic art restoration and cleaning tips using linseed oil and turpentine, and store oil paints in a way that prolongs their life. Painting on canvas is an activity that anyone can learn with the right instruction.

Video Transcript

"In this clip, we're going to talk about cleaning an oil painting. Cleaning an oil painting is really, rather easy, but for inexperienced hands, it can lead to a disaster. Take for example, this. This is a painting that has issues here. It's got a crack. It's also got some dirt, and it's got some areas, that looks like the canvas has been stretched in the wrong way. By cleaning an oil painting, it will bring out not only the light, but it will create a sense that the painting is fresh and new. Some of the issues of cleaning an oil painting, are that if you over clean the painting, you're going to get what's known as abrasion, and what that means, is that you're going too deep into what the artist originally did. Thus, leaving the painting pretty flat, and taking away some of the paint. There are solvents that you can use. You use them with a very soft cloth, or sometimes even with a Qtip, depending on how much you want to take off. You dip the cloth in the solvent. In this case, for the most part, turpentine or something like that, and you gently rub to get the loose dirt. Once you've done that, as you can see, there is dirt that's come off. Once you've done that, you can get a Qtip. In this case, I will do a brush, and literally dip that brush into the solvent, and little by little, take off the dirt."