Category: Self Portrait

After the wig experiment I got even braver and cut my hair very short for the first time since I was about 12. I was going for something spiky, between Laurie Anderson and a pixie cut but this is what my curly hair wants to do.

I painted the oil sketch above from a photo as a test for using shellac as an archival primer/sealer/ground on paper. I used the Zorn palette (black, white, cadmium red and yellow ochre).

I got bored after painting my head so everything below my chin is pretty rough.

Getting Started with Shellac

Although it comes in a colorless formula, I bought amber shellac so that it could seal the paper and tone it at the same time (and it’s easier to see what you’ve covered). Since it’s transparent you can do a drawing with pencil or charcoal on the paper and then shellac over it and still see your drawing. (See below)

Fun fact: Shellac is made from a substance secreted by female (she?) Lac beetles to make their tunnel-like tubes on tree branches. It is harvested by scraping it off those trees in India.

Shellac dries super quickly (in under 15 minutes) by evaporating out the denatured alcohol, which is the liquid the shellac is dissolved. It barely smells at all but it’s still good to have ventilation.

It’s best to make it fresh from flakes, but since I can’t buy denatured alcohol in California to dissolve it in, Zinsser canned shellac is my only option. You buy it at the hardware store, not the art store.

Application: It should be stirred first (not shaken). Then you can apply it with a cheap hardware store bristle brush (or a nicer one if you can get denatured alcohol or don’t mind using ammonia to clean it). Supposedly you can also let the brush dry without cleaning it and when you put it back in the can it will soften and be ready to use.

You can also apply it with a rag, a squeegee or anything except a sponge brush according to the hardware store guy. For this first experiment I just spread it with a flat paint stirrer stick and it worked fine and made a nice variegated background.

I really like the interesting painting surface that shellac provides—not too slippery like acrylic sealant but not so dry/absorbent like gesso or Arches Oil Paper without sealant.

A Few Tips and Mistakes to Avoid

For more shellac tips, watch artist Aimee Erickson’s video demo on using shellac to prime pages in a sketchbook for oil painting.

Shellac is thin and as it turns out, quite splashy. After I applied the shellac to my paper, I put the lid on the can, and, as I usually do with my gesso bucket, I tapped the lid with my rubber mallet to seal it. That sent golden shellac from the rim of the can splattering all over my table, the wall, a framed (in glass fortunately) painting on the wall and everything on the table. Now I carefully wipe the rim before tapping it with the mallet.

I did the drawing for this painting directly on the shellacked paper. Even though I had pretty good luck with the drawing, I still needed to do some erasing and redrawing. That roughed up the surface unpleasantly in some spots. Shellacking over a drawing may be a better solution.

I tried shellacking 140 pound cold pressed watercolor paper instead of Arches Oil Paper for another painting. Even though it does seal the paper, I found the painting surface quite unpleasant, and won’t do that again.