More Handy Useful Tips for Painting in Oils!

In addition to healthy tips for painting in oils; I would like to write about some other useful tips that some people may find handy and be interested in learning about.

First, when laying out your paints on your palette try not to be skimpy or stingy on how much you put down (I know that some of the paints are expensive). Oil paint usually takes several days before it starts to dry out and will stay moist for several days. If you can put your palette (with your paints) in the refrigerator in between painting sessions, this will keep your paints cool and slows down the drying time of the paints. Some colours will dry faster than others. The earth colours will dry quicker such as yellow ochre, burnt sienna, raw sienna.

Another useful tip for painting with oils is always clean your brushes after every painting session. You don't need to buy the expensive brush cleaning stuff for this job, you can just use ordinary dish detergent to clean your brushes with. First clean them with your turp or paint thinner then wash them with your dish detergent. Put a small dab of dish detergent in the palm of your hand and rub your brush in this soap. Rinse with water thoroughly and lay flat to dry. Try to not stand them up when they are wet as this causes water damage to the ferrel of the brush. After they are dry you can pop them in the can standing with brush side up.
Hope this helps. I'll have more useful tips in another post.