Paint Preservation on Palette

One of the challenges every artist faces is paint drying out in between sessions. Up until now, I have been placing plastic wrap (like the stuff you cover food with) over the paint and pressing out the air. It works about 80% effective, but the paint still stiffens up more than I would like, and eventually dries up and I have to start over and scrape off the palette. I probably throw away $300 worth of dried up oil paint each year. I do use a sheet of plate glass 24" x 36" x 3/8" for a palette. Glass makes a wonderful palette because it is smooth and always cleanable.

Many artists freeze their oil pallete to keep it from drying out, but I use a palette that is simply too large to place in a freezer. I also met another artist who put their oil palette into a tray of water. That seemed like a good idea. I thought my palette was too big to do that, but I'm going to try it anyway and just finished my setup for it. I bought a 29" x 41" condensation drip pan from Grainger Industrial Supply http://www.grainger.com/Grainger/DIVERSITECH-Drain-Pan-3HAK1?Pid=search and intend to keep it filled with water, raise my oil palette out of the water to paint (slide a couple blocks of wood underneath it) or drain the water through the drain hole in the drip pan, and then lower it into the water in between sessions with the expectation that the paint will not dry out at all while underneath the water. I am really anxious to see how this works out. I put a piece of opaque white plastic material under the glass just for light background for color mixing. I am wondering if I will have to lay a piece of plastic over the water to curb evaporation. Probably not in Seattle. Humidity here is ALWAYS above 85%. Phoenix would be a different story. For my artist friends, I'll let you know how it works. Below is the tray setting on the table I use for a palette, with the glass sitting down in the tray now.

First Submersion. All seems well. Next time I drain the water, I want to level the table top. It is sloped slightly. Should have done that first, but no big deal. Today I lift the palette out of the water. Will be interesting to see how well the paints recover from being submerged.

Results: Today I did 4 paintings after resurecting my oil paint from submersion of the palette into water. I will put lessons learned below, but the paint maintained PERFECT consistency. Better than I had hoped for. Not dried out or stiff at all, which is what I was hoping for.

Lesson's learned:

1. Small amounts of dust settles on top of the water, and when the water is drained, I could see the dust settling onto the paint. I didn't noticed any degradation of the pigment, but didn't like seeing that happen. I am tempted to buy another plastic drip pan and turn it upside down and use it as a cover (above but not touching the water.) This is going to be important going forward as I also do shop work in my studio (sawing, sanding) which produces more dust and debris than usual.

2. I should have leveled the table prior. It's not off much, only a degree or two, but water is perfectly level and I can see where the table is slighly off. I did have to mash down a couple of the piles of paint so they would be under the water on the shallow end.

3. Evaporation caused the water level to go down very slightly. I can see that if a palette were left under water unattended, that someone would have to occasionally add water to curb evaporation.

Results Overall: Excellent!!! Better than even hoped for!