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Recycling old paintings
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Message
Posted
I have several years' worth of paintings stashed away which will never see the light of day again, and am thinking of painting over some of them. Box canvas, acrylic paintings, would save a bit on buying more canvases, also am running out of storage! I know that you can white them out with gesso and/or opaque paint, but I thought some of you might have some more inventive ideas. Have any of you done this? I realise that some could be just whited over and used for trying things out (like the skies Robert was so helpful with) but someone might have some tips for getting a different painting out of some of them? Mostly they are abstracts in a sort of grid format.
Posted
Good question Sandra and like you I will be interested in any ideas. I suppose you could have a big clear out and a home exhibition. Maybe team up with some other artist with a backlog of stuff. Pity you don't live nearer we could do a joint garage exhibition. But N Z and N Wales are a tad far removed.
Posted
I regularly give failed oil paintings a gentle rub over with fine sand paper and then cover with gesso tinted with a small amount of acrylic paint to provide a fresh tinted ground. it seems to work OK although I've wondered if the acrylic over oil might cause longer term problems but as they are usually test pieces or studies for other paintings it doesn't seem significant.
Posted
Painting in acrylic over oil is always a bad idea if you're planning on your work having any longevity (you'll be lucky if they last a matter of months - although if you do as Stub does, there's a slightly better hope of adhesion, i.e. if the paint is old, hard, and sanded down. Obviously, you wouldn't sell work done this way because you couldn't guarantee it).
Painting over old acrylics, with more acrylic or even oil presents far fewer, if any, problems. In practice it's not as straightforward as it sounds, because there'll be textures - bumps, lumps, directional brush strokes, odd bits of impasto - which will show through new paint: but with a lot of inventiveness and imagination, you could perhaps incorporate these in a new painting. It should be structurally sound enough, especially if you use acrylic exclusively. And of course if your original painting was smooth and even, the problem is reduced.
By the way, the way incompatibility between paint layers shows itself, in case one or two don't know - the paint rarely actually falls off the canvas, but you'll notice blisters between the acrylic layer and the oily support - you can't ignore them, they're all too obvious; you can't flatten them or paint over them. Rub them, and you'll be able to peel the paint off in strips - nothing you can do then but throw the painting away.
Posted
I don't tend to hang on to rejects Sandra, generally (and it's not often) if I do end up with a nightmare I simply throw some turps over it and wipe the oil paint off before it goes hard, which will also leave you with a good colour base to work on. Okay, I've just seen the word 'acrylic', so that's the end of that scenario unless it's fresh paint: Robert has that medium covered.
Sylvia, I'm not far away and have around 1000 old and newish works which would I'm sure go some way to filling your garage. Being generous, I would of course leave you a small corner for some of your stuff.
Posted
A big thank-you to everyone who replied, really helpful. I would have enjoyed a combined garage exhibition Sylvia if we weren't at opposite ends of the planet. I'll keep the suggestion of teaming up with another artist in mind perhaps for future though. I think for this time I'll go with Robert's suggestions for developing a new painting over the top, after whiting out the original. Any surface unevenness could be incorporated into an abstract design I think. Thank-you for such a comprehensive reply Robert.
Alan, actual rejects are definitely dumped. These were sort of not bad enough to dump but not good enough to have out in sight, but the canvases should be able to be put to use, I'll see. Some might just turn up in the Gallery (but definitely wouldn't ever try to sell any that had been worked over).
Posted
I have a darn good inexpensive full facility scout hall available nearby, using it for an exclusive one day sale last year. I would be prepared to team up with someone and do the same again, as I paint nearly every day and have a stack of stuff, some passing trade might find interesting. Leaflets, flyers and posters could advertise it..