Help with Glaze/Varnish finishing!

Sounds like a pickle. I am not so experienced with oil based products but I know you don't want to varnish over the top of a wet surface, that could end in tears. I imagine removing or drying the glaze is the way forwards. I have varnished a couple of acrylics and it does deepen the colour but popular wisdom says you leave it a while before doing so and several thin coats are better than one thick one. It is possible to mess a painting up in the varnish stage so I would try it on a rough work first rather than on a masterpiece that you have slaved over for considerable time.

This is going to be difficult, and it's a toss-up as to whether removing the glaze medium is going to be a better idea than leaving it - because cleaning oil off of acrylic is going to take a bit of doing and might well damage the paint surface. A damaged acrylic surface can be a problem to repair. My first thoughts - (actually, my first thought is 'read the label next time', but you already know that!) - are a) if the glazing medium hasn't dried - it should theoretically be easy enough to remove it with mineral spirits, or isopropyl alcohol: be very careful, don't rub it - remove a little at a time, taking all the time you need to get it off. Have plenty of tissues (kitchen roll is as good as anything else) to hand; b) if the medium has dried - you should in theory be able still to remove it, but that isn't a given at all: what's in it? Who made it? If it's an alkyd resin, it isn't meant to yield to spirits for obvious reasons, and probably won't when dry. It might be easier to apply a ketone varnish over it, or something similar (an all-purpose varnish, basically). I couldn't begin to guess if that's going to be stable in the long term, it depends on many variables, including how rigid the wooden surface on which you've painted is. In theory (again, good old theory....) an oil-based product over acrylic shouldn't be too problematic over a rigid surface. So if it has dried, in whole or in part, my SUGGESTION is that you leave it IF it has dried even in part. Whatever you do isn't going to be an ideal answer. If you manage to get all of the glaze medium off, then wash the surface with tepid water - I should probably say distilled water, but I don't really think it's going to make much difference - leave it for a few weeks, take another look at it to make quite sure all the oil has gone, then apply an all-purpose varnish, NOT a varnish intended exclusively for acrylics, just in case there are traces of glaze medium left. I won't ask what you used to prepare the wooden surface before applying the paint, in case you've something horrid to tell me! But if you applied it to bare wood, be careful not to leave water on the surface. Now then: I can take no responsibility for this advice and neither can POL - it's at your own risk! But this is what I'd do in your place. I will try to find out more, and you could visit the University of Delaware's MITRA website, where - although this is an unusual case - you might get more and better information. If you're going to get the glaze medium off, better do it soon, though - because it will dry eventually, and I'm afraid it's unlikely to look too good if it does. I don't want to rub in the flaming obvious, but it really is important to keep your oil and acrylic supplies separate - this is a mistake we all could have made in a hurry or because we just didn't know, but as mistakes go ... well, Daveyboyz used the word "pickle", and I can only say that lad has a considerable gift for understatement. His instincts are right though - them's your choices, and I'm sure we all wish you the best of luck with whichever you choose. I will try to find out more, but unfortunately that can't be done before tomorrow. If the stuff is even beginning to dry - I really wouldn't wait for me, but - get it off.

Well, it's one painting, so not a tragedy - you'll do many more. I didn't come back on this because I couldn't find specific advice - your error seems to be unique! Well, that's something for the record books, anyway. Clearly, if you ever sell this painting you would need to explain what you had done: because quite apart from 'buyer beware' considerations, cleaning this in the fullness of time could be a real problem. Still - conservators have to have something to test their skills, so you might have posed an interesting exercise for someone in around 100 years time. (Don't think I've never made mistakes, by the way - I once painted an acrylic over an oil ground, not realizing it WAS an oil ground, and had to watch helplessly while it bubbled and peeled off.)