What Is an Isolation Coat and How to Apply One Easily

What Is an Isolation Coat and How to Apply One Easily
In this tutorial video I talk about "what is an isolation coat, why I recommend using's an isolation coat and how to apply one"

what is an isolation coat,
an isolation coat basically is a transparent 100% acrylic polymer used as a pre-varnish. it serves to seal up your painting and give a nice bufferzone, margin between the varnish and the painting underneath.

why I recommend using's an isolation coat,
problems can develop when applying your varnish and youi may with to take off the applied varnish and start again, this can be a nightmare if you haven't applied an isolation coat beforehand and you can risk ruining the painting underneath. Also Varnishes collect dust in their pours and in time can dull, you can then easy remove the varnish as all artist varnishes should be removable. without fear of harming the painting underneath.

How to Apply a Isolation coat,
recommended for you isolation coat is a soft gel gloss, gloss over matt is preferred as it is much more transparent. if you are aiming for a matt finish you can easily use a matt varnish to achieve that effect after. but for you isolation coat use a gloss.
In this video I use a heavy gel gloss as opposed a soft gel, that's just because where I live soft gel is hard to come by and I've used heavy gel without problems for years now, I just add water to get my desired thickness. You want to add enough water that your application self levels, but not so thin that it will easily run. Some like to put the painting down to apply their isolation coat and varnish but I feel this seems to attract more dust, I prefer to just paint it on while its on the easel, the varnish and iso coat shouldn't run if I put it on and stretch it out correctly. if it starts running, its because your putting too much on and not stretching it out enough.

Thanks guys for watching, hope the tips helped, I know the video was a little on the long side but I wanted to show enough footage of me putting it on for those that wanted to see more of the application.

feel free to add your comments, suggestions for future tutorials, and so on.

Alex