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WARNING!
Artists' materials are very dangerous and can cause injury or death! Use in a well-ventilated area,
read all warning labels, and keep out of reach of children! Use at your own risk!
I want to show you how to mix paint with medium.
When you buy artists' paint from the store,
it comes out of the tube and it's very stiff,
and I like to thin it down, so it's easier to work with.
So, I want to show you how to do that.
This is the medium that I like, and it's a slow-dry medium.
We have all the recipes, and more,
on the supply list page, which is at: drawmixpaint.com/supplylist
So, go check that out, and you can find all the recipes.
But this slow-dry medium will cause the paint
to dry much slower, which I like,
because I like to work on my palette and have all my colors prepared,
so I can leave my palette in my studio
for five days, even a week, and my paint
is still wet and usable, and hasn't started to dry.
So, that's why I like the slow-dry medium.
Step one is to pick out some Mason jars,
and I like these, because they have nice straight edges,
and if I take a stick and put it down in there,
I can get to everything.
Versus something like this
where you have all these hidden corners in here,
and it's harder to get to.
So, find a straight Mason jar like that.
And these are 250 milliliters,
and that's pretty good for one tube of paint.
Or, that's 8 ounces, either way.
250ml (8oz) jar is good for one 37ml tube of paint.
This is some ultramarine that I've already mixed up.
It's got the date on there, when I mixed it.
But let me show you how to mix the paint.
We're going to start with a little bit of medium,
and just put a very small splash,
just enough to sort of run along the bottom edge,
and I'm just coating the glass with the oil.
That will keep the stiff paint from sticking to the glass.
It makes it easier to mix.
Once I've done that,
then I'm going to squeeze the entire tube
of paint into the jar.
This is a 37ml tube.
If you have a tube wringer, you could use it
to squeeze every bit of paint out of there.
But I won't do that now.
Then I'll pick up my yellow stick,
and I'm going to try to get some oil on the end of the stick as well,
before I push it into that paint.
I'm just dipping my stick down in there
and getting a little bit of oil on it.
I'm going to mix this until it's nice and smooth.
OK. So, once that's smooth,
I take a small stick, like this,
and scrape all the stiff paint off of your mixing stick.
Otherwise, it will just keep accumulating there
and not mix with the medium.
Another splash of medium.
And we're going to go a little bit at a time,
because it's real easy to go from being
a little bit too thick, to being too runny.
We're going to have to go in nice, slow steps
so we don't get ahead of ourselves.
Every color has different properties.
Every one acts differently with the medium.
For instance, the yellow. You can add a little bit of medium,
and then you add a little bit more,
and then all of a sudden, it's too runny.
The blue, it seems like you add more and more medium,
and you've added almost twice, three times as much,
it seems like, than the yellow.
Every one is different, so just go nice and slow,
and I'm going to show you how to test for consistency.
What we're going for is about the thickness of tomato ketchup.
And I'm going to show you a little trick
so you can test the thickness.
If you look at this stick— And it's a nice, flat stick,
and it's about this wide compared to my finger.
It doesn't have to be perfect,
but get a stick about that fat,
that flat, and this wide,
and mix it into your paint.
Now watch. I'll pick up as much as I possibly can,
then I'm going to turn, and it should just plop off
without too much hesitation.
That's a little bit too long.
That took too long to fall off.
Let me do that again.
Pick up a whole bunch of it,
turn it,
and it should just fall right off.
But the yellow is different than a lot of the pigments.
And they're all different, so you should do the same test.
Whenever I'm mixing paint,
I always mix it a little bit too thick.
So, this is a little bit too thick.
But I'm just going to leave it like that,
because once you let it sit in the jar
with the lid on it for 12 hours, or 24 hours,
you come back and then the paint has become thinner on its own.
So, I mix it a little bit thicker.
This is especially true for the yellow.
Mix it a little bit thick, put the lid on,
put it on the shelf, come back the next day,
open it up, and then stir your stick into it
and see if it has become runnier.
Because the yellow will sometimes get much runnier
as it sits in the jar.
All of that is going to happen in 12 or 24 hours.
Once it has gotten thin,
and you get your consistency right,
and it's been sitting on the shelf,
It's not going to continue to get runny.
So, that's how you mix the paint into the medium.
And I'm going to let this sit overnight
and see how it looks tomorrow.
So that's that one.
Once you mix up your paint, put a date on it
like I have the blue,
so you remember when you mixed it.
Let me show you a couple of things that are different.
The burnt umber dries much faster
than any of the other colors.
If I mix this with just a regular medium,
not a slow-dry medium,
or even just with a little bit of linseed oil,
and paint it on a canvas,
within 8 hours to 12 hours
it's going to be dry on the canvas.
Which is way too fast for our purposes.
What I'm going to do is take the burnt umber,
and I'm going to mix it with the regular slow-dry medium,
but I'm going to add a little bit of extra oil of cloves.
Because the oil of cloves is the thing
that retards the drying more than anything else.
So, I'll start by taking this jar,
and I'm just doing it exactly like I did the yellow.
The only difference is,
instead of starting with medium — slow-dry medium —
I'm going to start with straight oil of cloves.
So, what I'll do is
for one 37ml tube,
I'm going to put 3 teaspoons of oil of cloves
to start with in my jar.
I just dump the oil of cloves in there,
and I've got... not quite enough in this one,
but just to show you,
and I'm going to run it around, just like the medium,
then I'm going to — this is before we add any slow-drying medium —
add the burnt umber,
mix it thin with the oil of cloves,
and then from there, just add the slow-dry medium
like we did with the yellow.
Get it to that same consistency
as tomato ketchup.
That's how you do the burnt umber.
A little bit different.
The titanium white is a little bit different.
The titanium white has its own special medium
which is slow-dry medium for titanium,
and it has a lot less stand oil in it than the regular.
And for some reason, titanium white —
every pigment is different — but titanium,
when you mix it with the regular slow-dry medium,
it can become very stiff
depending on the manufacturer, and a number of things.
But just to be safe, I really like to use
the slow-dry medium recipe for titanium.
So, that's how you mix paint with medium,
and now you're ready to go.
The paint in the jars will stay fresh and good
for six months or a year, without any refrigeration.
If you're opening your jars all the time,
that's going to make that a little bit shorter,
but I've never had any trouble with paint drying
inside these Mason jars.
If you're not going to be painting for six months or a year,
you can always take your jars
and close them nice and tight, and put them in a refrigerator,
and let them sit in the fridge.
They'll probably last two or three years in the fridge.
When you pull them out of the fridge,
and you want to get into your paint,
let the jars sit outside of the fridge a couple of hours
until it becomes room temperature, and then open it up.
Only because you'll get a little bit of condensation on the paint,
and you don't want any water getting into your paint.
So, that's how you handle that.
That's all there is to mixing paint with medium.