Prepping the Parker Roadshow
And so the cycle starts over… varnishing, matching paintings to frames, framing… and pulling all the little details together for another show. This time next week, we’ll be sitting in our booth at the Dan Emmett Music & Arts Festival in Mount Vernon, Ohio. Yesterday and today I varnished a few new pieces. With the heat index at 109 degrees, even being in the garage was no fun. The forecast for Mount Vernon next weekend is daily high temperatures of 85 degrees, which would be welcome relief. Of course… OF COURSE! the forecast also is calling for scattered thunderstorms on Saturday and Sunday. But that can change in a week. For now, it’s business as usual in the week before a show out of town. Get a couple of new tires for the Trailblazer… finish framing… empty the art bins and repack them with the pieces intended for this show… and adjust the load in the trailer.
Rest assured, I’ll find some time to paint… or at least do some preliminary work on paintings that are rattling around in my head.
After all, it’s what I do.
Ralph Parker, Artist 
You are varnishing the gouache paintings? I’ve read several comments online about varnishing gouache and they all seem to agree that it can’t be done. Plus I tried varnishing a little gouache painting that I did and it changed the blue to purple. Of course I was using acrylic varnish and this could explain it but I didn’t think you could use any kind of varnish on gouache. Would you care to share your secret? I really like the non-toxic attributes of gouache plus I like the way it looks but I gave up on it right away because I don’t want to leave it un-varnished. Any help would be so much appreciated.Thanks!
Minji… yes I varnish my gouache paintings. Have been for well over the last 3 years. And I seem to be finding more and more people who do the same. I have no secrets in this regard, and I use Kryon’s Kamar Varnish (it’s a spray varnish, and I prefer the gloss finish. BUT… before you go out and buy a can of it, please read the page on this blog about Painting With Gouache. Scroll down and you’ll find a section on varnishing. No one should varnish a piece they’re really proud of until they’ve experimented on a reject and let it sit for a week or so. It’s a very personal choice, and you need to make sure you’ll be happy with the result. I also normally direct the curious to western artist Gordon Snidow’s website. I don’t know what varnish he uses, but he does varnish his paintings. Check out the prices of his originals while you’re there.
Thank you so much for the info. I will try it out!
BTW I did check out Gordon Snidow’S art. Wow! I’m amazed at what he’s doing with gouache and amazed at the prices he’s charging. Well I’m not really so amazed at the quality of the goauche because I see your work and others and I can just feel the possibilities of it for myself. I’m definitely going to keep experimenting with it.
Thanks again.