You’ll never guess what I do with used solvent. #oilpaintingtips

Who needed to hear this? ????

Tip for oil painters: you NEVER need to throw out the solvent in your oil painting jar.

I was at a workshop recently and one of the students didn’t want to bring back the dirty solvent in her brush cleaning jar, so I just took it back with me to use later & thought it was a good example to show how the solvent and paint separate.

Most painters use a jar of mineral spirits (eg gamsol) to clean their brushes. Just like acrylic paint water this solvent gets all muddy with paint during your session & many artists throw this liquid out at the end of the day - but don’t! You can see that overnight all the dirty oil paint sludge sinks to the bottom so all u have to do is pour out the clean solvent on top & reuse it. You can scoop out and collect up the oil paint sludge over time and actually make this into new paint! (See my video on this).

This is also why u should use a brush cleaning jar with coils or some kind of agitator in the bottom cuz all the paint falls to the bottom under the agitator & you don’t stir it up when your cleaning your brush.

You should also use a jar with an airtight lid & keep it closed. Over time you do have to buy more solvent cuz you loose some due to evaporation - having an airtight lid on your brush cleaning jar and keep it closed. But you will save yourself a lot of money and waste over the years.

Follow me for more art tips & please consider buying me a ☕️ to help support videos like this (link in bio)!! If you’ve read all the way to the end of this caption you know what to do … comment the sparkle emoji ✨!

#oilpainting #oilpaintingtips #gamsol #turpentine #dorisrose #oilpaintingtutorial