Post by Morat on Jul 13, 2009 9:22:12 GMT -5
We've all lost paints to it in the past I expect, picking up a rarely used pot only to find nought but a solid block of paint at the bottom of the pot. In the past I'd have cursed my luck and toddled off to town to buy a new pot, and hurled the old into the bin, propelled by swearing.
However I've found there is life after death for these casualties of war.
Adding water to dried acrylic paint of course does nothing, it just sits sadly atop it, sloshing about disconsolately. The trick to re-mixing it is to add heat. Tricky with meltable plastic pots, the answer is boiling water.
What I usually do is to add about one teaspoon of boiling water to the pot (assuming there's not much dried paint at the bottom, as is usually the case when it's dried, add considerably more if there's a lot of dried paint). I then pour boiling water into a cereal bowl, suspend the pot in it (mind your delicate fingers, wearing some rubber gloves should prevent a scalding) and hold it down for a minute or two. Then give it a vigorous stir with the wrong end of a brush or some similar stick like object. What should happen is the softened paint should break up into lumps in the water you've added, resulting in a horrible looking paint soup. Further stirring will see these lumps break down and melt back into liquid and you'll have a somewhat more workable pot of paint again.
It will thicken considerably as it cools But as long as it's somewhat liquid and not a solid block, it can be watered down further with tiresome old cold water in the usual way.
It's at this point that you can all tell me that you've known this for years, and I'm a complete moron for throwing tens of pounds worth of paint away, like the selfish, wasteful, westernised git that I am.
However I've found there is life after death for these casualties of war.
Adding water to dried acrylic paint of course does nothing, it just sits sadly atop it, sloshing about disconsolately. The trick to re-mixing it is to add heat. Tricky with meltable plastic pots, the answer is boiling water.
What I usually do is to add about one teaspoon of boiling water to the pot (assuming there's not much dried paint at the bottom, as is usually the case when it's dried, add considerably more if there's a lot of dried paint). I then pour boiling water into a cereal bowl, suspend the pot in it (mind your delicate fingers, wearing some rubber gloves should prevent a scalding) and hold it down for a minute or two. Then give it a vigorous stir with the wrong end of a brush or some similar stick like object. What should happen is the softened paint should break up into lumps in the water you've added, resulting in a horrible looking paint soup. Further stirring will see these lumps break down and melt back into liquid and you'll have a somewhat more workable pot of paint again.
It will thicken considerably as it cools But as long as it's somewhat liquid and not a solid block, it can be watered down further with tiresome old cold water in the usual way.
It's at this point that you can all tell me that you've known this for years, and I'm a complete moron for throwing tens of pounds worth of paint away, like the selfish, wasteful, westernised git that I am.
