I make sculptures (well, I try to, anyway) with old wood that I find in the forest. I strip and sand them heavily until I reach the "good" wood underneath the bad parts, but the remaining wood is still usually kind of porous, and has a dusty look, although it is actually clean. At that point, the wood has a brownish color, as you can see in the picture below, but it is not very dark. The color is very uneven, however, with lighter parts and much darker parts. But overall, apart from the dusty look, the color is fine.

Then, as soon as I try to apply any kind of finish to get rid of the dusty surface (clear varnish - spray or brush, linseed oil, wax, anything), it gets much darker, and it ruins the whole thing. I think it is because, as it is porous, the finish goes into the pores and reflects the "darkness" inside them, or whatever. I also somewhat tried fancy stuff like oxygenated water to lighten the color, and some mixture of white crayon and oil, without success. And any attempt to use some light-colored translucent paint makes it loose its natural look.

I would like to find a way to make the piece of wood look less "dusty" (it doesn't have to be shining bright, but just look "finished"), revealing the wood grain as much as possible, still looking as natural as possible (painting them isn't what I want), without the wood turning into a dark brown/almost black color for the most part.

Is there a solution for this?

Wood after sanding, no coating. Color is acceptable, but looks dusty/dull.

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Wood sample, half waxed (neutral wax, very slightly yellowish - but whatever coating used would get approximately the same result)

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Other piece of wood, coated (coating based on lineseed oil and some fancy stuff I tried to mitigate the problem, which did not improve anything). Way too dark, except in a few areas.

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