Tips & Techniques

50 Studio Tips and Tricks

(Transcript of the tips from the links section listed above.)

*There are actually 52 and a bonus tip from us.

1. Use bamboo place-mats from a dollar store to roll-up your brushes or paint tubes for travel.

2. Paint tubes that are cracked or have missing caps can be dipped in hot wax to seal them.

3. Soak hardened paintbrushes in Murphy’s Oil Soap for a day then rinse well.

4. Straighten a splayed brush by dipping in linseed oil to reshape then dip in glue and let dry. Rinse out in a couple of days after the bristles have reset.

5. When en plein air (outdoors) or studio painting, to match colour or value, hold up the mix on a paintbrush or palette knife in front of you, next to the area you are painting. If it disappears (when you squint), you have the right colour or value.

6. Use a spot card to determine value and colour,by punching a hole in an index card to isolate the colour and holding it up to the colour you want to mix, then looking through the hole to view just the isolated colour you are trying to match. Do this with a white card, or one painted a middle grey to help determine the value of the isolated target colour.

7. Use daylight bulbs in your studio for colour balance.

8. Use rotating kitchen utensil holders for brushes and palette knives – these can often be found at thrift stores.

9. Turn your paintings to lean against the wall for dust-free drying.

10. When using masking tape to get a clean line in acrylic paint, tape the edge, paint with clear medium, and when it dries, paint the contrasting colour and you’ll have a perfect line with no bleeding.

11. To save reference photos from paint, keep them in a clear bag (like zip-loc) to protect them. If you do, you can also test colours against it, by putting a tiny dab next to the colour in the image, then wiping it away.

12. Quickly matt your painting in a neutral colour, to get a fresh view. If really large,just step back and look through a matting frame.

13. Lightly moisten a dent in the back of your canvas and when it dries it will be tightened again.

14. Any2 dark colours, one warm and one cool will create a nice deep grey.

15. White clouds can appear even brighter (and ‘pop,’ especially against a blue sky) by the addition of a tiny bit of cadmium red.

16. Have a day-pack ready-to-go, next to the door – you’re more likely to spontaneously go painting en plein air if you don’t have to pack first.

17. Use old plastic cards (like credit cards or hotel room keys) for scraping or painting small fine lines, and more.

18. To restore an enamel old paint box, palette or pan, see this URL: http://cathyjohnson.info/tips/tip101.pdf)

19. Morning or evening light creates more drama in photos, so get out early morning, or early evening with a plan to get the right light in your photo. Same goes for en plein air painting.

20. Using a triad of limited colours in your palette will create more harmony in your painting as a whole. (Limit to one red, blue and yellow to mix all other paints).

21. Plastic pill organizer boxes (such as the kind with one week of compartments and snap lids) are great holders for paint on-the-go, or saving paint from broken paint tubes.

22. Use natural sea sponges to create texture. Get an assorted bag for endless variations. You can even tear them apart to get more surfaces.

23. Slit a small drinking straw and place over a small paintbrush to protect the bristles.

24. Sharpen the end of a paintbrush in your pencil sharpener to create a tool to sign your work or scrape in very fine lines that have the feel of a pencil but leave no lead behind. Its weight makes it handle better than a bamboo skewer. A wooden skewer also works; cut off the tip if too fine.

25. To remove stubborn paint tube caps, try grippy can opener to open them – works 99%of the time. If still not budging, (1)stick the cap end into a boiling cup of water for one minute before attempting to twist off the cap, or (2) last, clip off the bottom of the tune, then re-close with a bulldog clip. And remember, tube ringers help you get more paint out of the tube.

26. Prevent stuck caps in the first place by coating the threads on new tubes with a thin coat of Vaseline. It usually works all the way to the end of the paint.

27. If not sure why something looks amiss in your painting, take a B&W photo and compare to your subject/source photo. The values may be wrong and not marry up when you see them in B&W. The problem will jump out at you.

28. If you need a super straight line in your painting, use very thin paint and a pizza cutter to paint it in.

29. When having a hard time capturing the right shape from a photo, turn both it and your drawing upside down, and try again. Your mind is removed from the object and sees it abstractly so records it more accurately.

30. Rubbing alcohol removes dried acrylic paint, whether on clothes or to make small corrections in your painting. A bar of green Artist soap sometimes works to remove oil paint from clothes.

31. Try sanding your gessoed surface with a brown paper bag; unlike sandpaper, it smoothes without scratching.

32. When colour pencils get too small to use – glue them onto the end of another pencil with super glue to extend them comfortably.

33. Use carpet remnants to carpet your studio they can be cut to the sizes you need and are very cheap to buy.

34. Acrylic painters: don’t throw away your paint skins. You may find they have textures you can’t randomly get otherwise. Cut them up as you would collage paper and add them to canvas with fresh paint, to create new looks. Artists are frequently doing this now. Google ‘acrylic skins’ for inspiration.

35. Watercolour Artists: apply masking fluid with shaper tools; unlike with paint brushes, the masking peels off the shaper, so using shapers prevents ruining brushes. The shapers also come in a variety of sizes.

36. Ivory black oil paint dries much slower than other colours so don’t use it in underpainting.

37. A 10 lb box of packing paper is available from UPS for only $10 and lasts a very longtime for your shipping needs. For boxes, Uline has very reasonable bulk rates if you use the same size over and over.

38. Spend your money on the big three: paint,brushes and surface you work with. Be thrifty on everything else.

39. Afraid of blogging? Start with a very small audience via privacy permissions, then as you grow more comfortable, add to list or go public. Also remember, unless you tell people about it, it’s very unlikely anyone will find it.

40. Make spacers to stack your paintings for travel: For every one spacer, start with two 1"x 2" strips of cardboard, hot glue gun, and 10 tacks. Poke 5tacks into each cardboard strip, making sure the tacks go through the cardboard and stick out the other side pretty well. Place a good amount of hot glue onto the head side of one cardboard piece & sandwich the 2 together. The glue will also serve to stiffen the cardboard quite a bit. If you want more of the pinpoints exposed, use matt board strips, instead of cardboard. When you are ready to pack your wet paintings, lay 4 spacers onto the face of one painting.Now lay the second wet painting face down onto the points of the spacers and tape each side down to make a wet painting sandwich. You can stack several, of varying sizes, together and then put them all in a plastic bag. Put the whole package in your luggage or travel pack. The points are just enough to keep everything separated, and stationary, and still make a small neat package. (to see the instructions with visuals go to Mary Maxam’s blog at URL: http://marymaxam.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html)

41. If struggling with arranging objects for still life paintings, try organizing the objects on your shelves by colour or shape or height and it will help you better visualize them as concepts rather than as objects.

42. Setup your still-lifes on a reflective surface for more shapes and a fresh focus.Glass, metals, satin fabrics all have different degrees of reflection to give different views and results.

43. To clean several pastel sticks at once, place them in a bag with a cup of uncooked rice. Gently toss them around and the rice grains will give each pastel a nice scrub on all sides.

44. Remember: All colour is value. Value first, colour second, is the rule.

45. Still life: use colour cellophane over your spotlights to add unexpected drama and colour – if you photograph it, you’ll get even different results.

46. Oil painters: put a large type coffee filter into a funnel, placed in a jar and pour your dirtied turpentine through to filter out paint solids quickly. You won’t get clear fluid back, but it will extend the life of your turpentine.

47. Place a small ‘x’ in the center of your canvas before you begin to paint. It will help you avoid a bull’s eye effect by reminding you not to place the center of your interest there.

48. To clean every bit of encrusted paint from a brush washer can, fill the can,strainer and all, with 90% rubbing alcohol and let it soak overnight. The next day, pour out the alcohol into a jar to reuse another time, then rinse the can and strainer in soap and water. The alcohol gets all the dried paint to peel off. Repeat another night if needed, for tough bits.

49. Do not keep your rolled canvas in a cold room. Sizing and white lead coating become brittle and are likely to crack when unrolled.

50. If you want gesso to have a bit more grip, use a second coat of Liquitex clear gesso over your traditional white; the surface is similar to the finely sanded surface used with pastel. Instead of the typical slick gesso surface, adding the clear gesso gets a grittier surface, that is flat and smooth.

51. Before using a new wood palette, pour a little linseed oil on it; then using a soft clean rag, rub oil over the surface. Allow the oil to sink into wood thoroughly.Repeat on the other side.

52. Reminders when painting water: the reflection of an object in water is typically longer and darker than the real object. As a river comes toward you the colours intensify. Use transparent colours when you painting objects in water to help depict the transparent nature of water.

Source:

4 September 2014 Interview on blogtalkradio.com/ArtistsHelping Artists: “Fifty Studio Tips and Tricks.” - Transcript written by CarolLyn Lewis.

*Bonus tip from us:

*53. Re-purpose a small but tall size tissue boxes to hold wet brushes you are using. It keeps you from putting your arm or hand on them, from them rolling off your work-station, and keeping the brushes from accidentally touching each other. Best practice is to insert toilet paper rolls inside the tissue box to keep them upright.

Did You Know...

• Did you know that you can mix dark colors (including brown, green, purple, blue, and red) to get different tones of black? Experiment with making your own blacks. Try using a darker brown then mix with dark green and dark blue. Or dark brown with dark green, blue, and red. Try it with the purple. You will find that depending on whether you use red or blue will determine if your black will have a slight warm or cold feel to it.
• Oil paints don't dry like acrylics, they oxidize. That is why it takes so long for them to "dry". Oil paint goes through a chemical reaction; when the paint comes in contact with the air it begins to harden. While water just evaporates from acrylic paints. That is why oil paints take so much longer to dry with thicker coats and putting a fan on your drying oils doesn't really do any good, there is nothing to evaporate. Oil paint can take years and years to dry depending on how thick the paint is.

Do's & Don'ts

(Take these lightly. You are still the artist and you are encouraged to do things your own way.)

• Don't - Unless you are painting an abstract, don't use a lot of different colors. Using too many colors in a painting can make a painting too busy. Learn how paint with about 4 to 6 colors for your pallet. Of course you would mix these colors to make the hue you need. You can mix together brown, purple, and green to make your own black hue. Try it!
• Don't - use paint right out of the tube on your painting, mix the colors to make the hue that you want - that is, if you are wanting to paint like a professional - (according to many professionals and art educators).
• Don't - use the canvas to mix your colors. Use the canvas to BLEND your colors (if you want them blended, that is). Mix your colors on your pallet. However, your colors do not have to be completely mixed together before you begin painting with them if you don't want them to be.
• Don't - over-blend. Over-blending can cause features to be lost and it can cause colors to become muddy. Muddy has no depth. - Let there be texture! Texture adds character! Character adds interest!
• Don't - feel like all or any of your paint has to be blended, because it doesn't. If your style is impressionistic and you want to just put colors next to each other, then do it! It's your painting and it's your style.
• Don't - skimp on the amount of paint you use in your painting (for oils and acrylics). Don't be afraid to use a lot of paint. Remember, are you painting for it to feel like a painting (giving it texture) or do you want it to feel like a photograph or a print (flat without texture - feeling no paint)? - You really want it to look and feel like a painting.
• Don't - compare yourself to any other artist and don't try to copy any other artist's style unless it's for study or practice or you really WANT to paint like that. You can lose the opportunity to find out who you are as an artist if you only copy other artists styles. And comparing yourself to others is not good for your artist self-esteem.
  • If you are lacking confidence in your artistic ability, compare yourself to other artists and feel inferior to them, or just want a little boost in your artist self-esteem, Art & Fear - by David Bayles & Ted Orland, is a fantastic book to help you boost your artist self-esteem. Even if you are not lacking confidence now, it is highly likely that there will be some point in your artistic career that you will. I recommend that all artists own and read this book regardless what your confidence level is at. Read it, hold on to it, read it again and again.

• Do - study your subject very closely. Look very objectively at the colors you are seeing. Is that really just brown or is that brown with a red hue to it? Try to see all the colors that are there.
• Do - study other artists. Practice painting the old artist's work. Recreate a few Rembrandt's or some Renoir's, maybe a few works from Artemisia Gentileschi. (*Remember to respect other artist's copyrights and intellectual property - which are automatically granted to the original artist when a tangible piece of artwork is created. www.copyright.gov)
• Do - study your subject to "see" EVERYTHING. See the wrinkles just below the eye. See all the veins running through the petal of a flower. "SEE" EVERY DETAIL!
• Do - Practice often!!!
• Do - be forgiving of your mistakes. That is how you learn and grow.
• Do - allow yourself to practice painting quickly. Meaning don't spend a lot of time trying to get every detail perfect, put the paint on there and move on.
• Do - remember the term "Fat over Lean" and how it affects the oxidizing times (drying) of your paintings.
• Do - Paint your canvas with an underpainting or undercoating (a thin layer of paint that adds a hue to the canvas rather than painting on a white background) and let it dry before you beginning your actual painting. ***White backgrounds are reflective and can skew the color value. Painting on a canvas that is a color other than white will help you see your colors better. This goes for your pallet too. It is recommended that you use a light gray or brown colored pallet in order to see your colors as they really are.
• DO, DO, DO - stand back several times throughout your painting process to see what your painting looks like from at least 6 feet away. You need to see your painting from different perspectives. Your painting can look fantastic close up and then when you step back and find it looks completely different than you intended. It can also help you find where something might be too much or lacking.

References

Photo credit: (Top) Mary Pierce, (Mid) Sparkyjae - www.pixabay.com

Copyright © 2015 Angela Lenz