WFMartin has a method he uses to flatten out the paint, but I haven’t heard of burnishing on oil paint. Of course, just because I haven’t heard of it, doesn’t mean it hasn’t been done. Good luck to you.

I use piece of fine pumice. You can control abrade process by more or less pressure on it. You probably use other smooth stone with fine abrasive surface, but pumice works perfectly. In iconography they use fine agate polisher to burnish tempera.

Hi, I am wanting to burnish an oil painting to reduce surface roughness to increase the contrast in my art.

I am wondering if this will harm the film and weaken the paint structurally or will it smooth only the top layer with no effect on structurally effecting the lower layers?

I cant find any info on other artist who burnish oil paint.

Well, burnishing oil paint is not a standard procedure, as far as I am aware.

However, since your object seems to be “reducing surface roughness”, and “increasing contrast” in your art, I may be able to offer a couple of suggestions.

Surface roughness is, indeed, the cause of the lack of depth, and contrast in any painted medium because of the light-scattering effect of the rough surface.

However, a much better way to create a smoother surface begins with the surface preparation, rather than trying to invent some way to smooth the painted surface after it has dried. This means applying acrylic primer and sanding, until the weave of the canvas has been nearly eliminated, and the surface is smooth. This is one reason the old masters painted on boards, and panels, instead of canvas.

Surface roughness is also caused by brush strokes. Nothing wrong with placing a brushful of paint on your canvas and leaving it, but don’t expect that to leave anything but a rough surface.

Now, while “blending” may not be popular with some, there is a method that the old masters of portrait painting often used, called “flogging”. Flogging is nothing more complicated than giving the surface of the freshly-applied paint a good “beating”, at the end [or near the end] of your painting session. They actually sell “flogging brushes” for such an operation, but using one is really not necessary to perform the operation successfully.

This flogging operation achieved 3 important functions: It totally smoothed the visible brush strokes. It totally eliminated the impasto (globby/rough) brush strokes. It created soft edges of the subject against its background, rather “settling” the image into its background.

So…..at the end, or near the end of my painting session [just as my paint is beginning to set up], I use a clean, soft, dry, flat, 1-inch, Taklon brush and using criss-cross strokes, in random directions, I gently “whisk” the brush across the surface of my freshly-applied paint.

This eliminates the troublesome, and unwanted brush strokes, both visible, and dimensional, as it softens the edges of my subject on the canvas.

Painting, and glazing over a smoothly-applied, dried painted surface is quite desirable, at least for my operation, and is much easier than painting over a dried, impasto surface, for which each brush load of paint was applied and allowed to remain as applied.

If I decide that I want some painterly brush strokes to be apparent in the final work, I save them for the final layer or layers.

Leonardo did not leave brush strokes in his Mona Lisa, and he spent a great deal of time using a soft brush, blending the corners of her mouth, creating an effect known as sfumato–a soft, hazy, blended appearance. His brush strokes did not appear as carved granite, so highly prized by more modern portrait painters, and, in fact, his brush strokes were nearly imperceptible.

Anyway, that method I described of “flogging”, or “beating”, is actually a very simple, blending process that I’ve found to be quite a desirable operation to perform, at least early on in the application of paint.

No “burnishing” is necessary, at all, to create a smooth surface. For even more depth of color, just apply a coat of varnish after the painting is finished. This is especially useful for bringing out detail and depth in the dark areas.

I use piece of fine pumice. You can control abrade process by more or less pressure on it. You probably use other smooth stone with fine abrasive surface, but pumice works perfectly. In iconography they use fine agate polisher to burnish tempera.

I was just reading last night that Maxfield Parrish used pumice between every glaze layer. http://www.artcafe.net/ah/parrish/

Pumice needs not to eliminate brush stroke, but to make it flat and easy to paint over it, while blending will eliminate any visible strokes completely.

I was just reading last night that Maxfield Parrish used pumice between every glaze layer. [url]http://www.artcafe.net/ah/parrish/[/url]

Thank you, J.Miller, it is very interesting article!

Maxfield Parrish paintings are the poster children examples of deterioration and cracking problems.

From what I can tell, that’s because of the excess use of varnish between every layer. I’m not sure what varnish he used though and I’m not really sure what the layer of varnish adds. Just letting the oil dry should keep the layers from mixing I would think. I’d never heard of an artist using glazing for the entire painting until I read about Parrish doing it. I wish there were more of them in museums, I’d like to see one in real life.