Keeping squeezed out paint (from a tube, container etc.,) fresh and workable on your palette for weeks on end.

[Edward]

This tip refers primarily to Acrylic Paint but the following idea can be used for watercolour pigment from a tube, water-based oil paints, acrylic inks and possibly other types of paint and dyes.

As soon as paint is squeezed out onto a palette, it starts to dry. If left unattended, acrylic paint will dry hard very quickly and so will watercolour pigment although with the latter that doesn't really matter. Water based oil paints will lose their flexibility too within a couple of days. Inks and dyes will dry in minutes.

There are a few common known ways to delay drying times. These include adding other mediums to paint such as an “acrylic retarder” to acrylic paints or simply throwing a damp and moist towel over your palette. The former application of utilising a retarder will only buy you a couple of hours at most whereas using a damp towel might give you 24 hours or so.

There is another way to delay drying times too and that is to buy one of those small and expensive plastic boxes with a Perspex lid and which I think are marketed as a “Stay Wet Palette” by a well known UK art supplier. These are excellent and providing you keep to the usage rules, they will keep your paint fresh and moist for extremely long periods. The longest I’ve experienced is six weeks.

In my work as a professional fine artist, I paint in different mediums all the time. I have several paintings on the “go”; some are in acrylics, some are in watercolour and some are in water based “Artisan” oil paints. This means that I have several palettes in use constantly and I need to keep all of them moist and fresh.

I used to have a “stay wet palette” but I found it too small and replenishing the materials used to keep my paint moist became increasingly expensive. Eventually the whole box fell apart as it was made out of very thin plastic. Replacing the box with another would have cost me £20 and as I would have needed at least three of them, I decided to make my own.

I bought a selection of large “Tupperware” boxes with shallow depths from a well known supermarket for just a few pounds. You could probably find them in pound shops too or even hidden away in one of your lesser used kitchen cupboards!

For each box, I removed their lids temporarily and placed a thick wad of white tissue paper inside. It’s important to make sure that the paper is flat and meets all of the box edges. The next step is to gently pour a copious quantity of warm water onto the tissue paper so that it is submerged. Leaving the paper to soak up as much water as possible only takes a few minutes.

After that, the next thing to do is to pour away any surplus water so that all you are left with is a flat soggy wad of tissue paper sitting in a “Tupperware” box.

Now here comes the interesting bit. You need to place a sheet of fairly good quality tracing paper over the wad of moist tissues. If you can, it is best to buy a roll of tracing paper and cut it to size so that too meets the inside edges of the “Tupperware” box. As a contingency I sometimes use a sheet from a "Tear Off" palette.

Now you can squeeze out blobs of paint on top of the tracing paper. I put my blobs around the periphery and use the surplus spaces to mix my colours gently; a vigorous mix would cause the tracing paper to break up. If I do need to mix paint vigorously, all I do is transfer the pigments I need from the box with a palette or painting knife to a traditional hand held palette and use that.

Whenever I need to take a break from painting, I replace the “Tupperware” box lid making sure that all sides are sealed firmly.

Every so often you’ll need to gently lift the tracing paper up to either pour more water onto the tissue base to keep it constantly moist or to simply renew the used tracing paper with a fresh sheet.

I’ve found that the best tissue paper to use is that found in glass or china packing boxes. Using flat kitchen sponges work as well providing your chosen acrylic pigments don’t include Cadmium paints such as Cadmium Yellow or Cadmium Orange hues. These somehow melt the sponges through presumably some sort of chemical reaction!

Using newspaper is not a good idea either for the printed inks tend to mix with the paint making it dull and lifeless looking.

I’ve even used an old tee shirt instead of tissue paper and this worked well too.

There may be other materials you could use; the way to find out is to experiment.

The key values in keeping your paint fresh and moist over extremely long time periods is to ensure that the tissue base is kept wet and you secure the box lid when your boxed palette is not in use.

Leaving the lid off for hours at a time will cause the trapped moisture to evaporate and in a warm room or studio this can be quite quick. I keep a jam jar full of water close by to top up my boxed palettes.

I hope you find this tip useful? This is the very first sensible blog I've ever written so please be gentle with me! If you'd like to see supporting photos to help you understand this tip better, then please let me know.

Edward McNaught-Davis
Fine Artist and Cartoonist
www.inspirationalart4u.biz

[Edward]

I've experienced mold too in the palette but that was due to not using it for some time. If the palette is used at least once a day and obviously with the lid off then mold doesn't seem to appear. You could try washing the palette box out in a weak solution of vinegar and allowing it to air dry as mold and vinegar don't like each other. I haven't tried that one yet.

[Sarah]

I bought one of those 'Stay Wet Pallets' and it works pretty good. I don't paint as often, but I can see how buying replacement papers/pallets all the time could get spendy. I agree the plastic is kind of flimsy and would probably break if not careful. I've had a small problem with mold even though I use distilled water and Lysol sometimes. You have a great practical idea about replicating it's design; I'll have to try it if mine breaks on me. It's definitely worth going through the trouble to preserve expensive paints!

[Diane Stafford]

Thanks for your paint preserving tip Edward. I think you may have invented a piece of new studio equipment for artists (are you patenting this already)!

As you say you are painting more than one picture at a time, in more than one medium, I can see how this system can certainly be of benefit in saving your paints from spoiling as you move from one to the other.

Of course we want pictures :-)
when you can

Working mainly in acrylics I do use the tear off palette sheets you mention, when I run out, a plastic plate or a cling film (food wrap) over plate becomes handy- however, these don't add much 'life' to acrylics. I'll give your tip a test run :-)

thanks
Di
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Chester Artist