After drying for about 6 months, I applied a matte finish on this, and now finally got it framed after several delays. The nice part in oil painting is that it’s not a hurried pursuit.
Here’s a closer shot from when the painting was finished + progress: https://art.plantmonster.net/pieces/123.html
Does oil really take that long to dry? I never thought about it before.
Pretty much. It depends on a lot of factors, like how thick it’s gone on, which colours and what specific oils or additives are in the paint, what surface it’s on, how that surface was prepared etc, what the temperature and humidity of the room it’s stored in is. It’s not unheard of for artworks to be delivered to major exhibitions with paint that’s still wet round the edges, especially if it’s been a little “blobbed on”.
For the varnishing, it might be surface/touch dry a lot sooner, but the paint is still wet underneath - so “6 months before varnishing” is the general rule most people follow. There are some synthetic quick-drying varnishes which (in theory) if applied gently and carefully, will still allow the paint to “breathe” and let you apply it sooner, allowing the painting to continue drying out after varnishing.
Excellent post. It’s exactly this. My art teacher taught me that if you apply varnish too early, the wet layers beneath the surface may crack with time.
Me too! I was drafting a comment in my head as I looked at the work in progress photos in the link about how I had no idea oil took that long to dry.
OP thank you for creating this and sharing the process and a bit of info on oil painting dry times. I was fascinated from start to finish.
Lovely painting, that person looks like they are very kind and welcoming. But I might be putting som bias on relating them to someone I might recognize I don’t know what you were going for.
May I ask the details of the commission you were provided, was it a photo you worked from?
I do drawing and oil paints for practice, and asked around my family if someone wanted portraits since I’m doing them anyway and might as well paint family. This is a relative who likes to do speeches. There was a low resolution photo of one of the speeches lying around, so I decided to paint from that. The painting will be delivered for the person’s birthday soon.
That’s amazing! Thank you so much for sharing. Thats so cool they like to do speeches. My partner and I are like, “oooh I wonder what kind of speeches they do?” Thank you again for sharing the painting and the information.