How to Not Waste Oil Paint

so I want to show you a way that you can really save a lot of paint and save yourself a lot of money um when you look at a big dirty palet like this like this one here with all these colors over it you tend to think that it's um that it's wasted paint that it's that it's just a big mess and that that you should probably just throw it all away when you're finished but as long as this palette is fresh enough that there's not little bits of dried paint anywhere or if this is a working palette and you're mixing colors and you've kind of run out of room you can push all that paint into a pile and it's a perfectly good paint the only problem is really with the paint is that it's just in a million colors I mean it's just a big mess of color and so you have all this variety of color which you you really can't use um but if you put it all into a big pile like I am now and you mix it into one solid color then you basically created a bunch of really good um perfectly good neutral paint that you can then use when you decide later to uh mix up some color instead of having to dip into white yellow red blue brown to get your base back up if you're mixing neutral-ish colors this obviously doesn't work if you're mixing power colors but even if you're mixing a really strong color like a bright orange or a bright purple or something you know you can just mix that color as strong as you can and then use this neutral base to tone it down or to add some dirt to it so to speak so in other words it's really what we're doing by pushing this all into one big pile is we're just making a single neutral color so what I'll do is I'll just push this all together and I'm leaving this these bits but even if let's say that you're finished with the whole palette and this is and you think all your colors are mess then just put every last bit of it into one big pile and then we're going to mix that pile so that it's smooth okay so I can just take a brush or whatever I want and just mix this until it's a solid color it does you no good if it's a if it's a whole bunch of variety of colors and you don't do this so it's important that you take all that extra paint and just take the time to mix it until it's a solid color doesn't matter what it is you know if it doesn't matter if it turns out red or blue or you know whatever it's it's going to be a dirty neutral-ish color and we don't really care what the shift is but point being is once this mixed is mixed into a solid color and I could take more time but I really want to get rid of all these ribbons then I end up with a with a very simple color that I can then look at and decide you know what I need to build my base back up I might as well just use some of that instead of Dipping into white red blue and and whatever so it's basically like you know I I'm a I'm I encourage people to use a limited palette I mean at least it's the way that I teach there's a lot of ways you can mix colors but I use basically those five colors like I've talked about in my in my limited palette and this just adds one more color to that palette and it I mean it can be any neutral and just use it there to help you mix your colors and in the end it'll save you a lot of paint so that you keep your pure colors your white your red your blue and everything leave those alone as much as you can and use this base to mix your colors uh and it'll save you money in the long run now let's say you finished completely for the you know for you finished your painting you're going to quit painting for a few days or whatever uh you can take all this paint as long as it's fresh and as long as long as it doesn't have any little bits of dried paint in in it and you can push it over and just put it in a jar and put a lid on it and save it for later so I've got these this little jar right here and if one jar is not enough or you know get a bigger jar but I can just take that and push it right into my and I don't know if this is the best way to do it but point being is that I'll take all that paint put it in this jar mix it to a solid color and then um you know put a lid on it and uh save it for later it'll stay you know for a very long time in a sealed jar like that even as long as like a year so I hope that's helpful it'll really make a difference in saving your paint you know uh you always end up wasting a lot of paint but this will really sa save your save you some money in the long run and it's perfectly good paint there's nothing wrong with it the quality of this paint is just as good as fresh paint it's just been mixed to a neutral color now one last thing and I and this is a if you're using like certain colors like phthalo is the is the the prime uh example and phthalo blue which uh you know they phthalo Blue Goes by a lot of different names Windsor Windsor Blue by Windsor Newton is a phthalo blue but certain pigments are really intense and and powerful and they'll kind of ruin your your paint and and I don't use um phthalo blue very much but if I did if I was using it and I've got some here on the edge of my palette that intense blue green I would probably leave the phthalo blue out of my mix because it just kind of it's just not a real easy pigment to work with and I'd rather not have that polluting my whole neutral pile and and giving it that intense pigment that's that's kind of hard to work with so so that's about it and I hope that'll help you to save uh some money and some paint if you go to drwx paint.com you can find links to all my free videos If you go to Geneva fineart.com you can find out all about the paint that I use to paint with that I manufacture myself right here in Austin Texas and thank you so much for watching

Channel: Draw Mix Paint

Views: 112,449

Keywords: mark carder, carder method, oil painting techniques, realism, fine art, learn to paint, how to paint, brushwork, artist, geneva, geneva fine art, geneva fine art supplies, geneva paint, color mixing, limited palette, alla prima, sargent, paint, painting, paintings, painting demo, mix paint, mix color, mix pigment, mixing color, mixing paint, mixing pigment, color theory, color wheel, color paint, color painting, oil paint, save paint

Id: b6yQm08Cku0

Length: 6min 5sec (365 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 17 2017