Miscellaneous Tips

Here are a few tips that will make your painting work a little easier and help you to achieve your art goals.

 

Wet Palettes:
There's no need to buy expensive wet palettes and replacement palette paper...make up a simple wet palette using a round Styrofoam plate, a sheet of blue shop towel and a sheet of deli-wrap. (This should be the thin tissue like paper that is lightly waxed on one side. You may find it at places like Sam's Club.)

Fold the blue shop towel in half then in half again. Lay your folded towel with the folded point at the center of your Styrofoam Plate. Measure from the point of your folded towel out toward the loose edges to get the size to fit your Styrofoam plate.

Use scissors to cut a gentle arc across the loose ends of the towel. Be careful to not cut too deeply at each end of your arc or you will end up with a beautifully scalloped cut towel. lol

Now, repeat the same folding and cutting with your sheet of Deli-wrap to match the cut blue shop towel.

Open out the blue shop towel and lay it in your Styrofoam Plate. Pour cold water onto the towel until it is very very wet. Open up your deli-wrap paper and lay it dull side down on to the very wet shop towel. Press the deli-paper down and make sure it is in total contact with the shop towel.

Tip your set up over a container to drain off the excess water. I let it drain until there is just a slow drip drip of water coming out.
Voila! You have the perfect wet palette ready to hold your acrylic paints and keep them fresh while painting.

Do keep a dry Styrofoam plate handy for doing any color mixing and float blending. You could easily tear your deli-wrap by mixing on the wet palette so...mis on the dry palette and then transfer your new color to your wet palette. Blend out your floats on your dry palette also. If you've loaded your brush well and have the perfect amount of moisture in it, then proceed to blend on the wet palette, you may end up absorbing too much water from the wet palette and cause your color to travel across the brush or become too sloppy to control on your painting surface.

Finding Time to Paint:
Here's a little exercise for those who are having a hard time finding time to paint. Take a small notebook. Date the top of each page with the next seven dates. At the end of each day, write down why you did or did not paint that day. Note what you did do that day that may have kept you from painting. At the end of the week, take a look through your notes. Can you see a pattern to the daily distractions and responsibilities? See if you can find ways to simplify some of your time spent and where you could save time. Now work out a plan and set aside this saved time for painting.

Personal Studio Space:
If you haven't set up a place all your own for your painting, take a look around. I'm betting there's a closet somewhere in your home that is just piled with things that you rarely use or need. Empty that closet! Place a small table or desk inside the closet. Put up some shelves above the table top. Put a couple of good lights on the table or hanging from the closet wall. Add some stackable clear plastic bins underneath. Collect your basic painting supplies and organize them in the bins and on the shelves. You could even put up a cork board for pinning up those inspirational pictures and packets.

Set up your painting area on top of the table. Now, get to work. When you must stop, move your chair-close the doors and go. When you have a few minutes, open the doors, pull up your chair and start painting. You will be so surprised at what having an area where you can leave your work, ready and waiting for you, does for productivity. No more setting up and taking down every time you have a few minutes to spend on your passion.

Brush Cleaning Tips for your Acrylic Brushes:
Personal opinion here. In my classes, the brush basins are "not allowed." They really are the very worst thing you can do to your brushes, unless you want to buy new brushes all the time. Scrubbing your brush hairs or even running the ferrule on the ridges in the basins is what makes the brushes, flare, curl and become useless.

I use and have for each student a simple set-up for keeping their brushes clean and in good shape. Three well washed yogurt cups filled nearly all the way up with cool clean water.

The idea is this, the first cup is for swishing and rinsing the majority of the paint out of your brush. The second cup is for a second swish and rinse and the third cup is the final rinse. If the third cup starts to show color then we are not getting our
brushes clean enough. Now here's the trick to getting the brushes clean without wearing them out too fast.

Each time you clean your brushes and it should be very often while you are painting, you swish the brush well in your first cup of water. You may tap the ferrule against the side of the container, just be careful to not jab, poke or bend the hairs while you are tapping.

Then using a soft absorbent paper towel (I like to use the Bounty Select a Size towels-one sheet folded in half.) you place your brush inside the folded towel using the ball of your thumb and index finger to gently pinch just where the ferrule meets the brush hairs. Do Not pull on the hairs! Just pinch flat to incourage the paint and water out of the brush and into the towel. Open the towel and check for color. Repeat this procedure until you think all of the paint is out of your brush. Move to the second cup and repeat. Remember, your first cup is going to get dirty water very fast. It will turn the water a grayish green with all of the paint in the cup. You really must do the second rinse to get the residual pigment from the dirty water out of your brush. Through away the towel and get a clean one the next time you rinse your
brush.

I have my students stop about every 15 minutes or less to give their brushes this mini bath. Acrylic paint begins to dry almost immediately and when it's allowed to creep up into the ferrule it can ruin that beautiful brush in less than five minutes. No matter how hard you try to load the brush without paint in the ferrule it will work it's way up as you apply pressure to the hairs. So take the time to rinse and pinch often. You will become very efficient at this process after a short while and it won't take very long to getand keep the brushes clean as you go. Besides, a freshly loaded brush always produces better work.

At the end of your painting session. Take your brushes to the sink and with cool water and Murphy's Oil Soap, give them a really good cleaning, working the soap into the area where the ferrule meets the hairs. Don't abuse the brush during this process but do work the soap enough to release any paint that could still be in your brush. Give the brush a good rinsing then....here's my trick for keeping the original shape of the brush.....give the brush a good "old fashioned thermometer shake" hairs down. One or two good wrist snap downs is all it takes.

This will remove the excess water from your brush and it will automatically snap the brush to it's original shape. Good chisel edge or nice point on the rounds. Don't be tempted to play with the hairs while they are wet. Lay them horizontally across a small stack of towels so that the hairs and ferrules extend past the towels and are not touching anything at all. Once they have dried well (I leave mine overnight) then store them standing on their handles in a container with unpopped popcorn, kitty litter or marbles. Anything that will support the handles so that the hairs are not touching anything.

Ok, now say you do all of this and you are careful with how you use your brushes. They will still wear out. Most brushes will last about 100 hours of painting time. It will begin to show wear after only 30 hours or less. This time is reduced greatly if you paint often on rough surfaces. If you paint every day and use a brush for say, 3 hours actual work time....that brush will need to be replaced in about 33 days. Of course we rarely actually use a brush that many hours each day but hopefully you see my point.

Always buy the best quality brush you can but be ready to replace it when it will no longer do the job you need it to do. There's nothing worse than getting frustrated and having a bad painting day when a new brush is all you need.


More tips to come.............