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There is no doubt about it, restoring an oil painting can be considered an art form. It involves a fair degree of know-how, patience and a delicacy of touch. How successful you will be in achieving a pleasing outcome will depend entirely on the condition of the painting, and how valuable it is. Before taking on any restoration projects, a beginner would be well advised to take advice from a professional.

Failing this there are some methods which can be used to clean and restore your painting at home or in the workshop.

The one golden rule that must be always remembered is: you should NEVER allow water to come into contact with your painting. It is generally assumed that water soluble oil paints are a fairly modern invention, but they have in fact been in use for many years. By allowing water to come into contact with the surface, you can ruin a valuable painting in an instant. If you attempt to clean your painting with soap or detergent and water, you run the risk of inducing a kind of milky white reaction to the oil paint.

You may not think that damping the oil painting down to take the worst of the dirt away, will cause much harm, but in fact if you dampen the canvas in any way, you may be in danger of causing the canvas to stretch, leading to bagginess to the picture. Water can be very intrusive and can seep into any imperfections or cracks within the paint and cause flaking. This kind of damage is very difficult to restore.

Oil paint is used in conjunction with many different mediums such as linseed oil and other agents that help to thicken or thin the pigments during use. The integrity of the painting could be seriously damaged by using any kind of thinners or alcohol as these will invariably react to the painting causing the pigment to dissolve.

Abrasives (such as the scratchy pads used for washing dishes) will also interfere with the integrity of the brushwork and promote flaking.

To get a good idea of how grubby your painting is, you can lay it flat upon a work top and dust it with a feather duster to get rid of any loose fluff and dirt. You can also use a vacuum with a soft attachment or piece of muslin secured over the end of your nozzle to avoid damaging the surface of the painting.

A good method to remove general grease and accumulated dirt is to use a piece of bread. This method is useful for cleaning old books too.

Lightly brush the bread against the surface of the painting and you should see the dirt being absorbed by the bread. As each piece of bread

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