Making a clove box to stop wasting oil paint

Experimenting with a clove box to save oil paint from drying out.

Experiment the first

The sad thing about oil painting, is once we squeeze the paint out of the tube, it starts to cure and only lasts a day or two before it dries too much to paint with and we have to toss it.  It's sad when this happens.

If only there was a better way!

A clove box solves this problem and keeps the paint fresh for days or even a week longer than normal.  It cuts down dramatically on paint waste and saves money because good paint is pricy.  

Sounds good.  So what is it?  How does it work?  

Oil paint dries (cures) through exposure to oxygen.  The box has as little airspace as possible to prevent much air interreacting with the paint.  It can be any shape, most common seems to be to fit a palette snugly and about an inch tall.  But they don't have to be that size or shape.

But wait, there's more!

Reducing oxygen helps, but if we add a drop of clove essential oil in the box, the fumes will reduce the amount of oxidizing the paint does and help preserve it even longer.  

This clove oil is usually added to a little strip of felt or maybe even directly to the wood.  Current Best Practices in oil painting suggest we don't add clove oil directly to the paint as it's way too easy to add too much and the paint on the canvas won't cure properly.  But having the clove fumes in the box is enough to make a massive difference in shelf life.

The other big advantage of a clove box is that it protects the paint from the light (something I didn't remember at the time).  Light, especially indirect sunlight, helps paint cure/dry faster.  

Or so I've read.  Time to try it for myself.

I was offered a small sample of some paints but I wouldn't be able to paint with them until the next day.  I don't know anything about this brand or how fast it dries, so I didn't want to risk it.  So I made myself a quick clove box from a bit of plastic takeout food container (cleaned).  

On the bottom of the container, I taped a cotton bud and added about 3 drops of clove oil to it.  I wasn't sure how much, but it's a small container so I figured less is more.

Because the paint wasn't runny or greasy oil paint, I squeezed my dabs of paint on the lid of the container.  

Thinking back on this, I could have used this for greasy paint too and just kept the box upside-down.  

I kept this in the dark and the next morning, I took the paint out and put it in my palette.  It felt great.  No sign of drying or a film forming on the top of the paint.  The texture of the paint was as creamy as when it came out of the tube.  

Now it was only in the clove box for about  24 hours, so it wasn't a great test.  However, working with the paint, some signs of curing started to creep in after about 12 hours of being on the palette, which makes me think it's a moderately quick drying paint or pigments.  

After I finished painting, I had a tiny bit of paint left, so I put it back in the clove box and combined this with another trick that is supposed to make paint last longer - the freezer.  I have no idea if this will work or maybe it will be too much and work against me.  

After painting, I put what remained of the paint in the clove box.  And put this (carefully labeled "NOT FOOD") in the freezer.

Just under two weeks later, I got it out of the freezer and let it warm to room temperature while I made some coffee (15 min at most).  I probably would have done better to leave it a couple of hours to warm up and prevent condensation forming on the paints as soon as they came out of the box.

Observations.

All the paints were fine to paint with, although flake white hue and ultramarine blue were thickened.  Not forming a skin like normal paint dries, just needing more medium.  Yellow ochre behaved as per normal.  The quin violet was perhaps slightly more fluid than before.

But I don't know this brand well enough to say for sure.

The tape holding the cotton ball lost its stick and fell into the paint.  (Sad emoji)

The paint began to tack up about 8 hours after I started painting with it.  This is pretty fast.  The flake white hue mixes were the first to tack up.

Conclusion

It seems a viable option to keep paint usable longer with some minor adjustments to the box.

I suspect the brand (aka fillers or none) and pigment will have a substantial influence on how well this works.

It's not a forever solution.  Just adding a week or maybe two to the open time.

Experiment the second

Some improvement with the metal box, but I worry the clove essential oil is eating away at the finish on the box.  

There is a lot more experimenting to do with this idea.  Perhaps a wooden box rubbed with clove and  linseed oil?