ink-in-hand:

hustleerr:

soggy-bunny:

eliciaforever:

beyoursledgehammer:

steampunktendencies:

A remarkable Jacobean re-emergence after 200 years of yellowing varnish
Courtesy Philip Mould

PAINT RESTORATION OF MESMERIZING

I saw this on Twitter. He’s using acetone, but a cellulose ether has been added to make it into a gel (probably Klucel—this entire gel mixture is sometimes just called Klucel by restorers, but Klucel is specifically the stuff that makes the gel). 

Normally, acetone is too volatile for restoration, but when it’s a gel, it becomes very stable and a) stays on top of the porous surface of the painting, and b) won’t evaporate. So it can eat up the varnish.

It looks scary, but acetone has no effect on oils, and jelly acetone is even less interactive with the surface of the paint or canvas.

Will someone PLEASE clean the mona lisa

I literally thought this is what paintings looked like back in those days, I didn’t know it was yellowing varnish 👀

This is why you see a lot of non-yellowing on labels of varnish and other sealants.

It’s not that they prevent yellowing of what they’re sealing, but that they themselves won’t yellow.

Everybody is terrified to clean the Mona Lisa and potentially mess it up, but they’ve cleaned off a copy of it that was made shortly after it was. Shows off a lot of the details.