Presenting my dragonflies (Summer Pond)

Perhaps it's due to the complexity of my coloring scheme, or my child-like mischief, I want to do something unconventional to my mounted painting on Xuan before I frame it.  

I want to varnish it.

I remember reading somewhere that oil paintings get their vividness by virtue of light being refracted through the oil in which the pigments are suspended.  I figure my displays of blue and green and yellow could benefit from a coating of oil or varnish.  I suppose the traditionalists would protest vehemently of my sabotaging paintings done on Xuan paper.  Well, no pains, no gains is my answer.

The mounted painting is now dry and taut and is ready for harvest at this point, normally, that is.

I am using Liquitex gloss medium as my varnish.  To demonstrate the effect of my experiment, I am varnishing half of my painting to begin with.

Needless to say, the effect is dramatic.  There is an immediate reveal of depth and details are made more vivid.  I get the wet look back!  Obviously it would be ludicrous to varnish only half the painting.  I did it to prove a point.

I choose to lap on the varnish while the painting is still taut and fixed to the hard board.  This is to prevent any warping of the paper due to the uneven coating of the varnish.

The following photo shows the before and after the application of the gloss medium on my painting.

After the gloss medium varnish is dried the painting is now harvested from the hard board.

The shine on the lower left corner is the light reflection off the dry surface of the now varnished painting.  This is where the argument is valid from the traditionalists; that the quaint and understated feel/taste of the Xuan paper is totally annihilated.  My painting now reminds me of a printed poster with the sheen and all that.  I suppose I am lucky that this is not a traditional Chinese painting on Xuan.

Or, better yet, maybe I can try using a matte medium next time.  Food for thought.

I am quite happy with how this experiment turns out.  There is now a richness in the color that wasn't there before and the dragonflies look so vivid they are ready to fly off the paper.  It definitely delivers the effect I am looking for.  I am also happy about my use of sprayed alum solution.  I can see the clear margins around the multitudes of slight voids amongst the colors.  They look almost like divots on a golf course.  They help to portray the shimmering surface of the pond.  I am using them as subtle clues to augment our visual processing of the picture.  

I anguish over the matting of the painting.  Just a little bit.  My dilemma is that I have unequal heights in my upper and lower borders.  Typically a Chinese painting would have a wider upper margin because we designate that margin as the "Heaven", which trumps everything.  The example is most obvious in all the vertically hung scrolls.  But I am not dealing with a typical Chinese painting here, so I am not bound by that tradition.  I am going to cut my mat with unequal top and bottom margins and designate the bottom end as the one with the wider border. 

I am using a white mat with a black underside, thus the beveled edge shows up in black.  I really love the look of the thin black line between the painting and the white mat.  It bestows a bespoke feel to the whole setup.  

At last, my Summer Pond painting.