Since I don’t have any new work to post yet, I thought I’d do a quick entry on paints, and one of my favorite painting supplies: the Tube Wringer –a very simple device with gears that will squeeze every last drop of anything from a tube. [it's that blue thing in photo below.] Oil paint is expensive — and some colors are really expensive, so it’s important to get your money’s worth (because if you are an artist, you likely have very little of it). plus, wringing the paint out of tubes with one of these things is super gratifying and even therapeutic…for me anyway. I almost feel like i’m getting away with something when I use mine. simple pleasures I guess.
I also use it for toothpaste.
pretty much all the paint I have right now*, and my tube wringer
Once a paint tube was all rolled up, I used to use a razor blade to slice the top of the tube off to get that last bit of paint. there’s actually quite a bit that gets left in there. a while ago, I found out that with a little effort, you can use the tube wringer to break the top off paint tubes — just keep wringing until it breaks, then go to town. It can get a little messy if you wring too much though, so gloves might be a good idea.**
I realize this all may sound a tad obsessive, but I promise I don’t act similarly with anything else…no licking the inside of food containers for this guy. but buy a small tube of cadmium or cobalt anything, and you’ll understand.
*speaking of paint, see that tube of Windsor Newton Cad. Red in there? I’ve had it for almost 3 years, and have used it on every single painting i’ve done in that time. amazing! no wonder that stuff costs so much. (conversely, I’ve probably been through about 20 tubes of Naples Yellow Italian in the same amount of time).
**I’ve actually been wearing gloves whenever I paint for the last 6 months or so, in an attempt to minimize direct skin contact with the more carcinogenic pigments and mediums I can’t do without. It took some getting used to, but now it doesn’t bother me at all.
2 Responses to GETTING ALL THE PAINT OUT
Hey Aaron,
Been visiting your blog for a couple of months now. Do you have any brand prefernces for your oils. Think I recognise some sennelier and LeFranc in there. Gotta say I’m not much of a fan of Windsor for the price. Been getting into Blockx (belgian), Old Holland (dutch) and Rembrandt (dutch as well)
Your site’s been a bit of an inspiration and I plan to get off my ass and put one up myself.
hey Ben, I still feel very inexperienced with all the different brands and colors out there…I certainly haven’t tried that many. right now the majority of my paints are Holbein, although there’s a few colors I prefer in other brands. I also use Gamblin (yellow ochre, mars black), a bit of Sennelier (I’m still experimenting with them though, I like the colors but I have a hard time with the gooey texture), and lately, M Graham (which are Walnut Oil based and really play nice with Walnut Alkyd Medium). I used to use Windsor Newton a lot more, but now I think I only use their titanium white, cad red, and alizarin crimson. I recently got a few tubes of Old Holland (good god they are expensive) and even some of the new Blick branded oils, but haven’t learned my way around them yet.
Hope that helps! I’ve never heard of Blockx, but I’ll keep an eye out.