So this is the varnishing process. Varnish acts like a magnet to airborne debris like dust and hair, so the artwork should be hermetically sealed for as long as possible until the varnish dries. The result is an hours-long meditation on what it takes to eat twelve kilograms of cherries. I doubt that I have eaten a single kilogram of cherries in my lifetime, I don't like them very much. The pail came from a restaurant dumpster, I think, or was given to me empty. Right now beneath the upended pail are the globes with still-wet varnish. The varnish will seal the artwork for posterity and freshen the colours. Since I am using glossy varnish, it will also balance the parts where the labels were too shiny.
Liquitex again. The reason I am gravitating to Liquitex is that the local art store runs out of Golden and the other product lines. I really should get up earlier in the morning before all that is left on the shelves is Liquitex.
The Liquitex varnish is okay. As a big plus, it doesn't need to be mixed or thinned. Having to do mixing means there's a chance of introducing air bubbles into the varnish which can be nearly impossible to dissolve. This varnish also goes on in thin layers. For flat artwork, you'd want a thick varnish so that you only need to apply it once and it dries flat and smooth. Thin varnish shows brush strokes, but on the other hand it dries much faster and it won't run along non-flat surfaces (globes consist entirely of non-flat surfaces). So, thin varnish needs multiple applications. Liquitex gets cloudy the more layers you add, so there's an upper limit as to how much varnish I can use. After I lift the cherry bucket in a few hours, we'll know how the final result looks!
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