Overheard a lady at the art fair say she mixes her old dried paint with water to make watercolors

I always tossed my crusty acrylics but last week I tried soaking three half-empty tubes in water for a day and got a whole palette of usable paint out of it, has anyone else found a good trick for saving dried out oils or gouache?

2 comments

2 Comments

wesley_hart1mo ago

Friend of mine swears by mixing a little linseed oil into dried oil paint and letting it sit overnight on a warm radiator. Swears it comes back to life like nothing happened.

lilychen1mo ago

My cousin tried that linseed oil trick with a tube of cadmium red that was basically a brick. She put it on a sunny windowsill instead of a radiator and it worked okay but the paint stayed a little gritty. I've had better luck with gouache by just adding a few drops of gum arabic and water and mashing it with a palette knife until it smooths out. Gouache seems to forgive more neglect than oils do in my experience. Still haven't figured out a fix for dried acrylic though, that water soak trick only works if the paint isn't fully crusty yet.