Calendar
Art Tips
Submitted By Our Members
Plein Air Tip
Rosemary Benavides Williams
To keep your watercolor paper/paints wet while working plein air in the heat or even a warm, windy day, add Glycerin to your water dish. On the other hand, when working outdoors in near freezing weather, add rubbing alcohol to your water.
Carrying Paintings
Diana Pratt Dice
Carrying paintings with wire on the back sure can hurt your hands. I found that using plastic tubing (cut with scissors about 6 inches) slid on the wire; sure makes handling your work easier! Clear tubing is inexpensive and can be found in any hardware store.
Protecting Art When Shipping...
By: Jan Ross
I've found this inexpensive and practical method of cushioning framed art. One needs only go to a home store (Home Depot, Lowe's or hardware) and ask for foam pipe insulation. This insulation comes as a long tube, perhaps 7 ft. long and with different densities, and is open on one side. By cutting this foam tubing to a size a bit longer than the sides of one's frame, it can be slipped on to completely surround the artwork. One must use caution when applying it to artworks with plexiglass as I've found the adhesive can stick to the plexi and is a challenge to remove! This method has saved me many times as the artwork that was dropped actually bounced.
Blotter
By Linda Foltz
This makes a great blotter: take a new roll of toilet paper and take out the middle cardboard tube. Double a long piece of paper towel length-wise and wrap it around the toilet paper roll. This makes a fantastic blotter and when the paper towel gets dirty
you can just replace it with a new one folded length-wise until the entire toilet paper roll is saturated. It keeps your colors clean, helps you blot and test new colors, and works great to get a dry brush in watercolor.