Put your paint on ice
 

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. :)

I do that too
 

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.

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.

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?

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.

Saving paint
 

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

Sta-Wet Sponge
 

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.

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.

My way
 

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).

Ralph Mayer's thoughts on saving paint
 

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.)

Hi there, Michelle,

Thanks for the info. The landscape painter Scott Christiansen buys empty paint tubes from Daniel Smith art supply and fills them up with leftover neutrals. He separates his neutrals into cool neutrals and warm neutrals so they aren't total mud. The tubes are open at the crimp end so while it isn't quite as hard as forcing toothpaste back into the tube it is still not as easy as it looks. I tried to do this for a while but eventually gave up.

Thanks, folks, for the preservation tips. I'll try the freezer idea again. The last time I tried it I didn't label the container and one of the foraging sugar addicts in my household thought they were little piles of icing... and ate them. Yes, this is a true story.

Money
 

May I offer something? Paint is cheap when compared to your time and more importantly, the end result of your effort. I have enough Scots in me to be economical and I've tried the covering of my palette with plastic, which works the best if I have huge complex mixes out and I need them for the next day.

If you take a $7.00 tube of paint and note how much paint that really is, you will see how little you waste by keeping a clean palette. It's better to be wise in how much paint you put out to start with. I don't understand why Schmid makes his own easels or Scott C. saves left-over neutrals. They both make over $250.00 an hour while painting. You can buy neutrals and easels...certainly they can.

Tim,

I can't speak for Schmid but I know why I made my own easel. It is custom the way I want it. And I also have a hard time giving money to someone else for something I feel I can do as well or better. I also enjoy working with wood.

Another thing is I just have a desire to know how the things I use work and that goes from my heating system, to my computer and my car. I almost never call a plumber or carpenter when I need work in my home but I also know my limitations so far I have not exceeded them. I hate working on cars although I could do the work I just don't want to anymore.

I was told once that it is more economical to pay someone for their expertise and spend your time doing what you do to earn your money but sometimes I just can't help myself. Besides we all need a hobby and since my profession is what others might have as a hobby I do what others consider a profession as my hobby. :)

Back to the topic. Putting oil paint in the freezer keeps it from hardening for two reasons. One is that modern freezers are almost airtight boxes so the amount of oxygen is limited. But more important is that the chemical reaction that causes oil paint to cure is slowed or even stopped at the low temp. I do not think the paint actually freezes since there is no water in oil paint but the oil in it just gets very thick at the cold temperature. But it returns to normal when it warms. Now the water drops that form after you take it out are from the moisture in the air condensing on the cold mounds of paint. They should evaporate away as it warms unless you are in a very humid environment. It will not mix in to the paint oil and water don't mix.

As for Ralph Mayer's advice he is correct but the point of putting it in the freezer is to stop that oxidation. Also the more you thin oil paint at all with thinner be it a mineral spirit based or turps the more you weaken it even if it was not oxidized. Now it is my opinion that once oil paint cures you can't thin it back to it's original form even with oil. But most oils cure from the outside in so if you dig through the dried crust the paint inside is still fresh because the outside crust cuts off the oxygen and slows the curing. Oil paint does dry (like water based paints) some since the oil can evaporate but if that was all that was happening you could just add oil to dried paint and it would be like new. But most of the oil do not evaporate, they cure and once that happens you cannot reverse it. Well maybe some chemist at MIT might know of a way to reverse it but I don't know of any way. :)

Michael, I like that!
 

Good points all.

That's interesting. I'd like to know what other artists "make" per hour. Can you share the source of your information?

Math
 

Well, it's math. Schmid does a small painting in less than one day. Those start at $15,000. the math is easy. Scott C. figures are as easy to figure too. Both numbers I listed are modest/conservative.

Tim, That is assuming every painting sells. I am sure R. Schmid's paintings eventually sell since his work is in demand. But it does not sell at the end of the day he painted it. So yes you can roughly figure a hourly rate but it does not take in to account all the time that goes into their art. But I sure would love to be at the point R. Schmid is in his career. It almost does not matter what he paints now it will still sell. The last time I was on his web site the painting for sale was a small landscape study that probably took him less then 2-3 hours to paint and is was priced at $15,000.

Oh please, please give me that problem!

What can I say Tim, I just hate wasting paint. Some days, there are piles I have not even dipped into or maybe just a little. It seems such a shame to just scrape it off and throw it in the trash. The freezer solution gives me one more day to use it. I don't recommend freezing more than one or two days at most.