Put your paint on ice

Michael Georges · 10-30-2002, 05:10 PM

I have recently been very stingy with my paint. I squeeze out and mix a palette that I will need over several days, but I have been scraping it off and throwing away good paint at the end of the day because the piles tend to dry overnight.

I bugs me to waste paint.

No more.

Now I stick my palette in the freezer, and my piles come out the next day ready to use within minutes. I notice a tiny tiny amount of condensation on the piles when they come to room temp, but I mix the pile up a bit and the paint seems just fine.

I had heard of this practice, but had never tried it. Glad I did as it saves a little paint.

Lisa Strachan · 10-30-2002, 06:59 PM

It does work well doesn't it? I just lay some paper towel or tissue over the palette once I take it out the freezer, and it absorbs the water droplets. I wasn't sure if they should get mixed in with the oils, but it takes them off anyway.

Steven Sweeney · 10-30-2002, 07:46 PM

Try a loose cover of Saran wrap before depositing in the freezer. This will stick to your palette and help protect the paint from the drying effects of frigid air.

I've watched others use a Tupperware container in similar fashion. They'd carefully pick up the unused paint from the palette, leaving behind any parts that had gotten mixed up with other pigments, transfer the paint to the rim of a small plate, put the plate in the container, snap on the lid and stick the whole thing in on top of the frozen meat loaf leftovers. Then you're free to finish cleaning up your palette for the next day's start.

ReNae Stueve · 10-30-2002, 09:11 PM

I'm pretty lazy in this department. I lay an old cotton dish cloth that has been used for quite awhile as a rag, over the top of my palette. It keeps the blobs fairly moist at the outside.

I scrape down the sloppy center but leave part of the mixed shades that I've been working with. This gives me a place to start again.

Doesn't the freeze thaw process have at least the potential to changing any of the elements in your paints? I'm thinking separation of some crossed linked preparation. At least by day 3. But thats intuition not science.

Anyone have any science?

Jeremiah White · 10-30-2002, 10:50 PM

During the summer I notice that the paint dries very fast.

I paint in a part of our garage that's been turned into a studio.

It's been cold lately and I notice that the paint doesn't dry nearly as fast since it's quite cold down there.

Jean Kelly · 11-01-2002, 01:59 AM

Thank you Michael. After just purchasing my oil paint, I'm very reluctant to throw ANY out. Now I save all the leftovers as per your suggestion.

Jean

Enzie Shahmiri · 11-02-2002, 10:15 PM

I use a "STA-WET" sponge that is wetted thoroughly with water and placed in a Masterson Palette that comes with a plastic lid. I place my glass palette over the sponge and by replacing the lid every evening, the paints have stayed flexible for several days.

The moisture seems to prevent the paints from drying out.

Chris Kolupski · 11-04-2002, 12:08 PM

I lay out my paints on a strip of safety glass that has been cut into four equal sections. This sits atop my glass palette in the spot where my paint used to go. At the end of a painting session, I place all four sections of glass in a Tupperware container that goes into the freezer. The paints stay wet for a good week. Sometimes I have to scrape a little film off the viridian and the umber. Other than that, I waste very little paint.

As a side bonus, when I clean my palette during a painting session, the paints are located on the glass strip and out of the way of my alcohol rag. I just wipe up to the edge of this strip and my whole palette is clean.

Marvin Mattelson · 11-04-2002, 05:02 PM

If I want to save paint (usually I don't, for many reasons) I put it on glass in Tupperware underwater. No oxidation at all. I just remove the paint 1 hour before I start, pour off the water and any extra evaporates. I will mix the paint pile with a little of the oil binder that the manufacturer uses (i.e. Gamblin, refined linseed oil).

Michele Rushworth · 11-06-2002, 11:50 PM

The Artist's Handbook, by Ralph Mayer, is considered by many to be the bible of how to work with many types of art supplies, including oil paint.

Here's a caution for anyone who saves paint (using any method) and then finds that it has turned even slightly sticky. Mayer makes it clear that once paint has begun to turn tacky or viscous, no amount of thinner, oil or medium used to "reconstitute" it will reverse the chemical reaction of oxidation that has begun.

Oil paintings created with paint that has been allowed to dry, even a little bit, and then thinned out to match its original consistency are much more likely to flake or blister off the canvas. So, regardless of what method you use to store paint, be sure it's still pretty much the same consistency as when you squeezed it out of the tube and don't try to thin it out again.

By the way, here's my method for saving paint: I can keep it fresh for a few days in little "snack size" ziplock bags, making sure to squeeze all the air out. When I need the paint again I just snip off the corner of the bag and squeeze the paint back out on to my palette.

If I don't have large enough piles of separate colors that I want to keep, but have a pretty good mess of different colors, I sometimes mix them all together and save the result as a fairly useful neutral. It harmonizes with my current painting since it contains all the colors of the painting I'm working on.

I mix this neutral with colors straight from the tube to de-saturate them, or to cool down a warm color, for example. (I work with a very limited palette, so the mixed-up neutral doesn't contain impurities of too many different pigments and isn't too muddy.)