Vigo the Carpathian Painting - Craquelure finish

[Krats]

I've been toying with this idea for a while to recreate the painting of Vigo the Carpathian (aka Vigo the Butch). To this end I've been trying some techniques to see how feasible it is:



Anyway, I've hit a bit of a wall with the ageing. I've been looking at creating a cracquelure finish using a glaze but so far I've been unable to achieve the desired results. So far I have tried:

Painting Oil-based varnish over water-based varnish
Crackle Glaze from Fred Aldous:

Painting various types of varnish over this crackle glaze
Multiple coats of glaze​

Drying the glaze naturally and drying under heat.​

But all to no avail. You can see one of my test canvases on the right. I'm currently waiting on delivery of another crackle glaze from the States but in the mean time, I was wondering if anyone has any experience or advice they could offer on creating an appropriate, aged finish on a painting?

 

[Contec]

Re: QUESTION: Vigo the Carpathian Painting

Cool!! that is really good painted. I have the full sized painting on my wall

 

[Krats]

Re: QUESTION: Vigo the Carpathian Painting

Hah! That's awesome. I'm enjoying researching and painting this project but I gotta say I haven't really thought through where I'd put an eight foot canvas when I'm done

Anyway, this was a quick draft to see if I could achieve a reasonable likeness. Now I know it's possible I want to try some different styles for working it up (think it would benefit from a darker ground) but I'm still stuck on the finishing. I've never tried to make a picture look old before and the information on the internet seems to focus on the accurate forging of oil paintings... which might be interesting now I think about it:

1) paint picture on canvas with oils over a soluble intermediate layer
2) when finished, abuse canvas to introduce damage and cracks
3) float painting off canvas
4) apply to antique board (wood from old door or something)

Would have to be smaller than the original but would still be a time consuming process. Might have to wait until the new year.

 

[Krats]

Re: QUESTION: Vigo the Carpathian Painting

I thought I would update this thread with an answer in case anyone else wishes to add cracked varnish to a picture. Having failed in my attempts to create a home-brew solution I found a product which creates an effective craquelure finish. I've rubbed some paint into the surface to highlight the cracks.

View attachment 414602 View attachment 414603

Obviously there's still some work for me to do working out how to control the size of the cracks. I'm going to use the DecoArt whilst I experiment with washes to make the finish look dirty, but there are other products out there. If I can't get the finish I require I'll try some of them.

 

[bookface]

With oil painting the general idea is to avoid anything that will lead to the paint cracking, and to achieve this you would add more oil to your medium as you paint, so that the top layers dry more slowly than the first layers. Obviously you're trying to do the opposite, so I would suggest creating a glaze that mixes varnish and oil, put that down first and then when it is dry enough to apply a second coat, apply either pure varnish or a mix that uses a lot less oil. When this all dries fully the top layer should have dried and shrunk a little, cracking a little as it has dried a lot faster than the lower coat.