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.