Howdy!

Normally, acetone is too volatile for restoration, but when it’s a gel, it becomes very stable and a) stays on top of the porous surface of the painting, and b) won’t evaporate. So it can eat up the varnish.

Among other things, it is a gently obstinate call-out of the “shrink-wrapping” trend of palaeo-art (in which all animals are presented as if their flesh was shrink-wrapped over their jutting bones, rather than having normal things like chubby fat deposits or feathers or fluff) and the “killer claw” trend of writing about these beasts, in which the writer must make the creature out to be a VIOLENT destroyer of COMPETITORS in the BRUTAL MARKETPLACE world with its SHARP TALONS and LITHE BODY, as if one is writing fanfiction about an action figure that goes to the gym a lot, rather than describing the natural history of a living animal.

Gymspiration with Blake Williamson