If you sit down while painting, you can use a regular pane of glass instead of a palette. Be sure to put a towel underneath your palette or glass to ensure that you don’t scratch your table, though. Oil paint will dry on a glass palette in roughly 12 hours. On a plastic palette, it may last for 16-18 hours. A glass palette should keep your paint wet for at least 24 hours. These drying times depend on the temperature, light, and humidity in your workspace, though.
To keep track of your colors, scrape a little bit of the paint on top of each package of aluminum foil. This is a great option if you work on multiple paintings at one time and want to store specific colors next to the painting they belong with. It’s also the best way to preserve that perfect shade you spent time mixing up since there’s no risk of your paint mixing with other colors nearby.
Some artists are suspicious of clove oil and avoid using it because they think it changes the shades of their colors over time. If you don’t want the colors to change, clove oil may not be the best option for you. You can buy clove oil online or at your local pharmacy.
When you take your paint out of the refrigerator to get back to work, let the palette sit out for 30-45 minutes to give the paints time to reach room temperature. Cold paint can be harder to work with than room-temperature paint.
To use your paint, take the smaller cap on the front of the tube off and squeeze the paint out of the tube like it’s a normal tube of paint. These tubes are typically pretty large and you can store several ounces of paint in them. For an easier alternative, you can scoop the paint into any airtight glass or metal container. The paint will stay wet for 2-3 days in one of these containers[7] X Research source
It doesn’t matter if the second palette is inverted on top of the first palette or simply resting at an asymmetrical angle. So long as the paint is squished between 2 panes of glass, it should stay wet. This is really only a good idea if you’re using a small amount of paint. Doing this with large globs of paint will spread it out too far on your palette. The edges of the paint that you store this way may have hardened by the time you want to paint, but the majority of the paint should stay wet.
If a lack of humidity is a big problem in your home or workspace, get a humidifier and leave it on when you work. Be careful not to keep your paints anywhere with extreme heat since it could cause them to separate. [10] X Expert Source Renée PlevyPortrait Artist & Educator Expert Interview. 7 May 2021.
Paint racks look pretty neat when the shelves are covered in rows of paint tubes. It’s probably the most aesthetically-pleasing way to store your paint.
Put a towel under the tubes at the bottom of the drawer to keep the paint from getting all over the interior off your desk.
You can also use stackable boxes to sort large quantities of paint by brand or color. You can put different brands of paint in different boxes, or separate them by color and sort your paint that way.
This will also help you develop your mixing skills! With a limited number of colors, you’ll be forced to find a way to make those crazy shades and unique color combinations. You’ll learn a lot about color theory and paint mixing if you stick with primaries, white, and black.
