Hey everyone, so the other day I was organizing all my art supplies,
and I thought it might be fun to go over some tips on how to store and care for your paint and paint brushes.
So typically you go to an art store and you see paint tubes hanging with the cap side up,
and you can read the text just fine.
However, what will happen in oil paint is that the oil will start to separate from the pigment.
It is very natural for this to happen. It is not because you got bad quality paint.
However, if you keep it this way, the oil will start to pull at the top,
so when you open it, you can get mostly oil instead of pigment.
Or, if it is knocked over, or is on its side, the oil will start to leak out.
and it will create a really sticky mess.
So what you want to do instead is to hang it upside down.
So it is really helpful when the cap is really large, so that it can balance easily on the end.
However, it can be a little difficult to stand them on the end if the caps are a little smaller,
or if the tubes are a little smaller and most of the paint is gone,
so you can rest them on the side,
but just be aware that if the oil does come out, you can just wipe it away.
However, if you do feel that the oil is pulling at the top and drying,
and you can not open your tube,
go ahead and take a lighter or put it over some flame,
just to heat it up a little bit and loosen up the oil.
For acrylic paint, I like to lay them on the side.
Just because it makes it easier, and they do not knock over.
However, if you do lay them on the side,
just make sure you do not pile too many of them on top.
The bottom one will have too much weight on it.
And they can explode, like this one did when I was moving
So as you can see in my storage situation,
I actually stand up my oil paints in the back row.
And then I have acrylic paints laying horizontally in the front.
And I like to line them up in sort of a rainbow order so that it is easy to see everything all at once.
And I know exactly where all the colors are,
and if there are any gaps, I know what I am missing so I can pick it up next time I am in the store.
So after you are done painting, you may have some paint left over,
so I want to go over how to deal with that leftover paint.
So for oil painting, if you are using a glass sheet as your pallet,
you can actually just take that entire tray, and submerge it in water.
You can even take some wax paper and put it over your tray or pallet,
and stick that whole thing into a freezer.
What I like to do is to take some saran wrap, put it over my tray, and be done with it.
So something that works for both acrylic and oil paint, but I prefer to use for acrylic paint,
is to put leftover paint into a container.
This can be anything from film canisters to pill containers,
or little pots you get from the craft store.
If you work with really large surfaces, you might want to consider using food containers.
Here is some tupperware I put acrylic paint in.
I actually just put paint directly in here, and then mix the colors I want.
And when I am done, I can just pop on the lid, and it will stay fresh for a really long time.
Also, if you only have a little bit of kind of dried up oil paint,
you can also scrape everything, put it into a jar, maybe a smaller jar than this one,
add some solvent, mix it up, and you can use that for underpainting.
Brushes, you ALWAYS want to clean right after you are done painting.
Even if you are switching to another brush, you want to clean it before you move on to the next brush.
If you have paint on here, and it dries up,
it will almost be impossible to get the dry paint out.
One thing you want to be careful about is this metal part called the ferrule.
It will typically only have glue keeping this together.
So if you have a dirty paint brush, you do not want to just take it and sit it in a liquid and forget about it.
Or else the brush will come apart, or you can misshapen your brush.
So when you get the paint off, just dry it off,
pat it dry on a cloth or something.
And just lay it on the side, and then you can move on to another paint brush.
So cleaning your paint brushes for acyclic paint is really easy
because all you need is some water, maybe a little soap.
But for oil paint, there is a little bit more into it.
You can have something like this, which is a brush cleaner tank.
This is super grimy, so I will insert a picture of what it originally looks like,
it is basically a glass jar with a little metal coil inside.
And you can put in some turpentine.
And you just take your brush, and rub it against the coil to get the paint out.
And what is nice is that when you close this up, the paint will actually just sink to the bottom,
and then you have clean terpenoid at the top,
and you can just keep using the turpentine.
You do not actually have to buy something like that,
you can even just take a glass jar.
Make sure you have a lid on it, because you do not want to have open containers of turpentine.
And then you take a glass jar with a lid, put in some turpentine, put some mesh inside,
and you can clean your brush just like that.
You can even get something like this.
This is brush cleaner,
and it is basically soap.
It works with wet oil paint, dry oil paint, water color, and acrylic stains.
You just take some water, rub your brush in here, get a little soap,
and that will clean your brush really well, and sort of condition it a little bit.
And if you do have some dry paint on your brushes,
try putting some of this on there, letting it sit a little bit, and rinsing it off and see if that helps.
So I hope that gives you some ideas on how to take care and store your supplies.
If you have not, please check out my last video or actually three videos,
which is called the A to Z art survey.
If you are interested, please take a look at that,
maybe answer some of the questions,
I would love to hear from you.
And thanks so much for watching, I will see you guys next time!