Help – my paint’s gone thick! Some pigments are heavier or actually sourced from various earth clays and share a characteristic of thickening over time. Red Gold and Yellow Ochre are examples. These paints are still good to use. When needing only a small amount at the time of painting a work, squeeze out the desired amount onto the palette and add Clear Painting Medium (or Middle Medium) into this paint mashing with a palette knife until it is the smooth and fluid.
In the photo above the Middle Medium is being worked into the Yellow Ochre paint from an almost-empty tube which had thickened over time. The top of the photo shows the paint as it came from the tube – too thick but still good quality and just needing to be brought back to the original fluid consistency.
If the tube is quite old, squeeze all the paint out into a small container (or cut the tube and extract the paint). Add the painting medium a little at a time and stir in with the handle of a big paintbrush and finish off the mixing with a fork. Label the container with the title of the paint. This is the way to bring the paint back to the original consistency if the paint is already in a tub. I often purchase my acrylics in 250 ml tubs and at times I add some Middle Medium on the top of the paint layer as the level of paint goes down, to keep the paint from thickening over time.
This process is simply adding in more of the polymer emulsion that was already in the paint. It is never a waste of money to purchase artists quality materials. An elderly friend of mine who was over 100 when she died, left me not only her oil paints but those of her father. These old Windsor and Newton oil tubes were too old to open freely, but when I cut the sides, the artist quality paint inside was still workable and I created a large sunset oil painting using this paint.
There is more information in my book “Using Chroma Art Materials – Tips and Techniques for Creating Art” available for purchase from the home page on my web site triciareust.com.au.