Hello everyone:
Just finished stretching and gessoing 40 canvases. Ready to paint for the year!!!
I’ve been meaning to address this cleaning issue for a while. It is important to learn to work clean as a painter. This enables you to paint in your house, a friend’s house or a classroom without wrecking your woodwork, furniture, floors and clothes from renegade paint. It also enables another student to sit in your spot when you are not in class and not come away with damaged clothing. Undetected wet oil paint, once it gets on your clothes, is an invitation to disaster. If not caught immediately, it ends up on your car upholstery, it spreads to other clothes (if you put it in the wash and don’t know the paint is there) and sometimes finds its way under your shoes where you can now walk and leave a lovely paint trail. Oil paint is a bit like poison ivy. It’s one purpose in life is to attach itself to you without your knowing.
When I first studied with Liza Meade Steig in Cambridge, MA, I came to class in my paint clothes. There was not much of me that wasn’t covered in paint and I was now going to paint in Liza’s dining room! She explained very clearly to me that lords and ladies were able to paint in lace and velvet. Just because I was in jeans and a sweatshirt was no excuse to use my clothes as a paint rag. And there would be serious consequences if I got paint on her furniture. I was petrified I would leave paint somewhere in her house. Because of this I became very aware of my painting environment and learned to work clean.
Paint happens but it can be controlled if we are aware of our environment.
My Painting Set Up
Here is the set up that I use in my studio. I have 2 surfaces at right angles. The one in front of me contains a few spare rags cut up in very small pieces (big pieces of rag drag through the paint and then onto everything around you), my palette box with my palette inside. I am right handed so I have a piece of folded, cut up Turkish toweling in the right bottom corner of my palette box. This is where I wipe my brush of excess paint or scraped paint I’ve cleaned up before I add new color to my palette. My little cup of clean turp is at the front of my palette. I mix my colors in the center and always clean the center before I put my palette away in the freezer (oil paint keeps well in the freezer).
My turp can is to my right as I am right-handed. It has a cat food sized can inside it with holes punched in. The can is flipped over putting the holes on top. This allows me to clean my brush on the cat food can instead of swishing it in the dredges on the bottom. I NEVER leave brushes in my turp can. If brushes are left in the turp can, the brush you are using with a ton of paint on it travels down the handles of your brushes already in the can leaving a lovely trail of paint that you will now get on your hands when you go to use these brushes again. I clean each brush in the turp after I use it then place it on a piece of folded toweling on the area to my right. This also holds my jar of unused brushes waiting at the ready, my cup of tea (it says “She Who Must Be Obeyed” – a gift from one of my students) and my container of liquid laundry detergent where I will place my brushes at the end of my painting session to be brought to my sink to be thoroughly cleaned and rinsed in lukewarm water.
I do not touch the paint with my hands. Any paint that gets on my hands is cleaned off immediately. Also, my cup of tea is not directly near my turp can. This prevents me from dunking a paint filled brush into my cup of tea. Guess how I know this!
This set up allows me to set up quickly and clean up quickly. No paint on my hands, clothes or in my house!!! Hope this helps. Better to be painting than to be cleaning.
