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Message
but it will do for this test. Just have to wait for it to dry now. 
Posted
Well that went badly wrong quickly. I decided I didn't like the pour and decided to remove all of it. I thought if the isolation layer works then I can try another pour, hopefully a better one.
Well the pour came off easily in parts and some parts did not want to budge. Some pigments shifted more easily, alizarin was stubborn, the white went very gloopy, almost rolled into balls. Worst of all the portrait underneath was not protected by the isolation layer, most has gone. In some ways I'm glad the pour wasn't what I hoped as it is less sad. What is left is a horrible mess. Only thing to do now is get the sander out and reclaim the panel.
Obviously the solvents that are normally used to remove varnish are not as harsh as 100% isopropyl so I'm not saying the isolation medium does not work for its intended purpose, just that it did not work as I was hoping for this. I should of course just have done a couple of test layers on a bit of canvas and not a painting but there you go I didn't.
I like partially obscuring figures and I've used oil and cold wax to do this before. I would still like to work out a way of getting that look of a fluid pour over part of a figure.
Posted
Collette, you perhaps already know all this, but a different approach to removing acrylic in parts (I call it 'deglazing' but it might have an official name) is to paint your base acrylic layer, let it dry, then add your top layer and almost immediately (within a minute or so) remove the parts you don't want using water and a tissue. Whether this works or not will depend on how thick your top layer is -- I feel it works best with a thinnish top layer (often with added medium). I don't use a wet tissue, but instead apply the water directly to the still-just-about-wet acrylic on the canvas itself, before taking it off by laying the dry tissue flat and pressing down gently.
You can get lots of interesting effects by applying the water with a dropper, or spray, or whatever, or by letting the water run across the canvas in various ways before carefully soaking it up with the tissue. If you press hard on the tissue you get an interesting texture coming from the tissue itself too (or from your hands). The end result can be quite collage-like. The drawback of the approach is that you have to work quickly, but that has the advantage too of producing some spontaneous effects. I've worked on large canvases (up to 1m2) this way but region by region because the top layer would dry before I'd have time to deglaze it.
Edited
by Martin Cooke
Posted
So far as I could see from demos on YouTube, the paint is applied in very thick, if fluid, layers. I imagine that would make it very difficult to remove with isopropyl alcohol or indeed anything else, intervention medium notwithstanding.
Plus - I can certainly see ghastly mess developing, particularly if you could only partially remove these layers - I don't have any answers here, not least because I wouldn't try it, other than this: if you're going to do it, don't make the layers too thick - you'll never get them off if a paint layer has dried and adhered. I think you probably have to either go for this in gay (or other) abandon, or don't go for it at all. There is, in short, likely to be quite a high failure rate, at least until you're confident with the process.
Posted
Martin: I was foolishly hoping rather than removing it I could get a sort of ghosting effect, (like using an eraser in photoshop on 50%). Your idea is a good one, I tried something similar to what you're suggesting before but using a gelli plate.
Robert: Yes I probably did have the paint too thick but I won't be trying again. It does not come off in the way I hoped it would. It's not the pour I'm interested in as such. I'm after a way of partially obscuring or abstracting a figure or a portrait. I'll work something different out.
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