Who here's a visual artist?

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Yeah, I probably shouldn't be putting left over acrylics down these pipes here either. But I use a lot of (cold) water and make sure things are rinsed well. I hope that helps. That's another plus about watercolor - it doesn't turn to rigid plastic in your pipes. For now I just have to be very careful and not put excess paint on the palette and rinse my brushes in lots of water. Another thing I've done is use plastic tupperware to mix paint, let the excess paint dry and then peel out and throw away the dried remnant. That is particularly useful when using paints that have toxic pigments.

I've considered using disposable palettes for acrylics - they're paper, and so you just throw them away. All you end out rinsing is your brushes and brush water, so it's not so bad. But those paper palettes are more $$ I don't have right now.

Sadly enough, these pipes here are old and I don't trust 'em. But I used to have those throw-away palette sheets. That's a good idea. I'd forgotten about those. And I could certainly dump the water elsewhere...

But then I have to ask, do I trust myself with painting above carpets? Clumsiness is my second middle name. And if I don't get it on the carpets, it ends up on me. So, I'll have to find myself some painting clothes again and a nice trashy carpet or something to lay above the regular carpet.

Though knowing myself, I'd still inevitably get it elsewhere... somehow. I have curious cats, too. (My mother's cat, Grace, once jumped onto my lap, where I happened to have my palette. She got paint all over her paws and was running across the carpet before I could catch her. Not pretty.)

Yeah my cats get into things. They try to drink my brush water. LOL. But at least the odor of the paints tends to keep them away from the paintings (at least when they're wet).

I'm currently living with my parents so I can only paint in my small bedroom room where my books, clothes, bed and music instruments are also. I could paint in the garage, but environmentally it's a problem - too cold or too hot much of the year. So I stick to my room and I have be pretty careful about not getting paint on things. The carpet's due to be tore up so damaging it isn't the issue - it's having wet paint in placecs where it could be tracked by feet or get on other things. I have a canvas drop cloth I got at the Home Depot for house painting. It cost about $18. But It's long, and not very wide. I use it for some things, folded up. I also have an old canvas futon mattress cover I use as a drop cloth too. I use drop clothes even for my dry media, because that can get messy too.

Another thing I do is I paint on the floor or sitting down with the paper/canvas on my lap or a lap desk/board. I only use an easel for larger sized things that I can't leave on the floor or for a palce to let apintings dry. Not only do I prefer painting on a lower, more horizontal level, I'm less likely to fling paint on other things.

My situation isn't the most comfy to paint in, but I need to keep painting. I can't wait until I move again, because I really don't know when that might be. I was only suppose to be here for a year, but it's now been three and counting.

Hi, Just found your thread.

I love to paint with water mixable oil paints. I cannot be around the turpentine but I love the feel of the oils. This dilutes with special linseed oil or water and cleans up with soap and water. A real advantage when I need a quick clean up.

I also paint in a bedroom, but i don't want to mess up the carpet (it's new).

I like to use only yellows, reds and blues. I love the challenge of creating the color I see with a limited colors. I will use white, brown and black some. My paintings are very colorful, so black isn't a color I use much.

I learned a lot about mixing colors from this doc at Golden paints' website:

http://www.goldenpaints.com/technicaldata/mixguide.php

It's for acrylics, and they use Golden colors, but the ideas are good. Since Golden paints are high quality arcylics and tend to have a high transparency (withthe right techniques you can get very oil-like results), a lot of these ideas would probably work with oils too.

They say that instead of using red, blue and yellow primary color, to use magenta, blue and yellow. This allows for a wider and rich palette of violets and pruples, and through experimenting I found this to be true.

As for black, while I can't see living without it, I rarely use straight black, but lean towards very dark purples, blues or reds. They have more personality and depeth. Black has its uses, though, but alone it can look very flat, dead and one-dimensional in painting if not used wisely. In drawing I find black either defines or distracts from the picture, and it's a very fine line sometimes between the two extremes. When I do monochromatic drawings or painting, I never use black alone - I only use the darkest shade of the hue I can acchieve. Even in a "black adnd white" picture I'm more likely to use 90% grey than black. That's because black, especially if not coordinated properly (like a warm black with warm hues or cool black with cool hues) can "dilute" and overpower other hues.

Hi Everyone glad to have found you all.
I used to paint with oils.....loved the texture and smell...but no good for my health, so changed to acrylics. Agree acrylics are much more ecofriendly but can be a problem when left ob=ver on the palette.......I always have a canvas, canvas board, or paper, handy that I use to get rid of extra paint.... so I have an ongoing piece of work that is determined by the colours I've been most recently using. I often work on more than one painting at a time so I will have some unified colour theme... move from one to another. At the end of session I let rip on the "leftover paint canvas" or if there is a lot of a colour I put a plastic film( glad wrap" over ( I use pastic plates as palattes) the plate and put it in the fridge. It will keep for a while without drying up.
Also use a "drying retarder" when I don't want the surface to dry too quickly. Most brands of paint will also have appropriate drying retarders, spreading mediums etc. It is important to get one that is made by the same paint brand as some don't interact well with others. A bit like Aspie Nt interactions

Well, I do 3d art (I couldn't draw a straight line if you pushed me off a cliff with a sharpie....
There's loads of programs out there to do things for free; Bryce 5.5 (landscapes), Daz Studio (figures, also ties into Bryce...handy that.., Wings, Truespace, Anim8tor, and a zillion other free modelers, Blender (which does everything well, but nothing good...heh...but it's free), the Gimp (does much of what Photoshop does, but also free).

There's got to be loads of web site tutorials, or even programs that do the whole thing (I have the MS Front Page, which is lame, but servicable. I used to do it in HTML and wordpad...

My avatar was done by me in Mojoworld, Poser, and the Gimp. Character is Apollo Maximus, which is free, and a lot more 'morphable' than some of the others.