How canI clean discolored oil paintings?

Question

The paintings have a lot of white paint which have turned yellow due to cigarette smoke.
How do I remove the yellow?

Answer 1

ugh, i hate when this happens to a poor oil painting. well sometimes distilled water on a disinfectent wiper will due. but u need to make sure this happened because of cigarette smoke. i know oil paint also yellows because of an old varnish that needs to be removed and another varnish needs to be re applied. another problem that can occour with yellowing is that the painting has been in the dark too long. to fix this, just expose it to sunlight. but this is only for fresh oil paintings, like painted 6months- 1year ago.

but please, put it some where else instead of the smoking room.

Answer 2

Be sure the painting is a varnished painting before doing this. If the varnish is cracked you should think twice about using anything on the painting.

Grate a raw potato and gently rub it over the painting. There should be a light froth but no more. Remove as soon as it gets brown and redo with clean potato grating.
IMPORTANT!!:work from the bottom up.
Leave it on the painting just for a minute and remove with very little water at a time again from the bottom up.

If that does not help (enough) the varnish is tainted and should be replaced by somebody that knows what he/she is doing.

Answer 3

You might try a lite amount of soap (like Dawn)and water on a sponge at first as long as there isn't paint sticking out of the surface of the painting. Otherwise I think it would be best not to try it yourself, but rather take it to an art dealer who no doubt could tell you where and to whom you could take it to be professionally cleaned. Whatever you do don't try any turpintine or chemical solvents until you've talked to a professional art curator either at a museum or art framing store. You could end up destroying the painting which isn't what you want to do I'm sure

Answer 4

You can go online and find the proper way to clean an oil painting, but I strongly suggest that you take it to a professional as there are many steps to the process and it is easy to mess up if you are not sure of what you are doing. If you do attempt to clean the painting yourself, make sure you follow each step carefully and do not skip or take any shortcuts. Oil can be pretty tricky to clean whereas acrylic is soap and water cleaning. Good luck.

Answer 5

if it is discoloured you must restore it... the only white that does not yellow in time is silver white, now banned. it is possible the actual oil paint changed colour.

Answer 6

I would use distilled water on a clean white soft cloth and gently daub it. Perhaps, if that does not work, you may want to use some very gentle soap followed by a distilled water daubing..