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Mediums - what do YOU use?
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Posted
You asked if White Spirit would damage brushes - I haven't noticed that it does, but then I always wash it out with plain soap (or Fairy Liquid - did you or someone else say it was called "dish soap" in Australia and/or NZ?). While it evaporates, I can't help feeling it might denature the brushes, i.e. make them dry and brittle, if left in them.
There's brush-cleaning advice on the Rosemary & Co website - as they make them, I trust their opinions on cleaning them.
And I still have to face my claggy palette - putting it off just means the paint's getting harder all the time, but it's not a task I enjoy, so completely understand those using a tear-off paper palette.
Posted
Playing catch-up; busy few weeks. @RobertJ, ref the Zest-It, well so far it seems pretty good at cleaning out brushes and cleaning off the palette. The smell is lightweight and a bit lemony. I've also used it to dilute paint with, in small amounts....haven't noticed a problem. Downside with Zest-It is the price, I bought a bottle from (I think) Jackson's recently, a litre at £18. So you don't go sloshing it freely around. There's a Zest-It Washaway product for cleaning oil-brushes that is supposed to be washed-up with water....but it isnt much different in price from the other type.
Being a skinflint, I have some Zest-It poured out in a jar, and when the bottom of the jar is thick with deposit I filter it off and collect the clear fluid back again, to re-use. So my litre bottle should keep me going for somewhile.
Posted
To pick up a couple of things - Fairy Liquid is a 'dish soap', a product that is used for washing-up, and is sold under different names elsewhere. Possibly not entirely surprisingly.
And Chroma brush cleaner - that could be made by one of three companies, all incorporating the word 'chroma' into their title. So far as I know, its principal use is to revitalize brushes that have partially or even entirely dried out - how it does that, I don't know. For general cleaning of acrylic brushes, soap and water is usually more than adequate. For oil brushes - well, the choices are considerable, occasionally toxic (eg, mineral spirits/white spirit/turps), or Zest-it, as discussed above - the toxicity of which has been cited elsewhere: I don't know the truth of that - or kitchen towel to remove the excess paint, and plain soap and water.
My biggest problem is cleaning the palette - because I take too long over oil paintings and the paint dries out: hence my bafflement at times when people say oil paint takes too long to dry - only, I reply, if you souse it in oil as if you were preserving herrings: use it as it comes out of the tube, only adding medium if it just sits on the palette and sulks - unless you're running a painting production line, in which case I'd invest in a second easel (or use alkyds) - and it dries plenty fast enough for me. Mind you, I do use lead white when I can get it, which helps with drying.
Posted
I paint in oils...I never clean my palette off, which is apparently a no-no, as it means you drag the same colour palette into every painting. Well, each to their own. Bob Ross odourless thinners and liquin for mixing. Always R&Co for brushes, Long handled Ivory is my favourite. Washing up liquid for cleaning brushes (no Fairy for me, as they test on animals...Lidl's own brand is fine).
Posted
Cleaning your palette is not, really, necessary - many artists don't; and if they use the same basic palette (in the range of colour sense) for every painting, the need to do so is reduced. But you do need to be careful of scrapings of old paint getting mixed into the fresh - from a practical point of view more than anything else, because otherwise you risk getting beads of semi-dry paint where you don't want them, and they're rather likely to fall off the painting, leaving you with little holes in the coat.
Liquin is OK for mixing, though you don't really always need it: often, the consistency of the paint as it comes out of the tube is enough, maybe plus a little Linseed oil. I wouldn't personally touch any Bob Ross liquid product with a long pole - the hardware, brushes and knives, are fine: the Bob Ross knife is actually one of his, or William Alexander's, most useful introductions. But BR mediums, and the paints he used, are to be avoided. I don't know what's in the BR odourless thinner: if it's plain old mineral spirits/white spirit, it's OK for cleaning brushes, but not for mixing with paint - obviously you CAN, but it can lead to problems, i.e. a gumminess, and lack of adhesion; if it's something else, then it might be fine to mix with paint, if you need any solvent at all: I'd want to examine the ingredients, though. My mediums tend to be Linseed oil, stand oil, and occasionally Liquin - if I use a solvent, it'll be Sansodor or genuine Turpentine (hazardous though the latter is). I try very hard not to use any solvent at all - I've seen how you paint, though, and realize you need a good flow to achieve your remarkable results: my stuff tends to be blockier, and less detailed. But give Linseed oil on its own a try? Or have you, and didn't like it?
Each to their own, though, as you say: I've used all sorts of things over many years: if I were really restricted to just one thing, it'd be a choice between Linseed oil and W & N's Oil Painting Medium - if I could get the child-proof caps off the bottles...
Posted
I mainly paint in acrylics, and i just use a tiny bit of water on the brush to loosen the paint a little. In terms of cleaning my palette. I use an old Disney plate as my palette cover in damp tissue, and then covered in a layer of tracing paper/greaseproof paper, so once I'm done I just fold it up and pop it in a plastic bag to go in the bin. My theory (whether it works or not!) is that doing it that way slows the paint from drying on the palette so quickly.