Coming back around to simple art practices.

I have a morning ritual that is centered around my morning pills. For those of you who are young, it isn’t a thing; yet. Those of us who know, well; you know. I get up, take my first pills, wait a half hour and take my next pill and then I have to eat my breakfast. I tend to take that time to doom scroll, but I like information more than “lol cats” or “Acts of Active Darwinism”. A few days ago, I came across a couple videos about historical and inexpensive ways to do things for a fraction of the cost. I love the idea of finding old ways of doing things and sharing the information.

For most of my life, every summer I would spend weeks at a time cooking on cast iron. I value old dutch ovens and cast iron frying pans (the type you use to defend the home from a horde of rampaging pillagers) and would jump on them in any condition. I knew that if you soaked cast iron in vinegar, you could pull off a ton of rust but other than seasoning it; how else did you protect it? My mom talked of a chemical you could paint on metal that would convert surface rust to a protective seal that only needed to be touched up. I didn’t know if you could use it on cooking tools. She didn’t know what it was and going into the big hardware store got me a $11 can of spray. TOO THE PHONE!! Here was this amazing video talking about the combination of: Food grade Tantric Acid Powder (3%), Phosphoric Acid (10%) or “Naval Jelly” and Distilled water. 4g of powder, 100ml of distilled water and stir until powder dissolved and add 1 tsp of Naval Jelly. Clean off the loose rust but don’t get rid of all the surface discoloration and brush on 2 to 3 thin coats letting it dry between application. In the sculpting industry we call this patina, either way it converts the surface chemically and will protect the metal. You can then seal the tool with oil or paint; for cast iron cook ware, season as usual.

For stripping furniture, did you know that the citrus cleaner that they use to pull gunk off of stuff is just a thinned out version of a natural furniture stripper? Get a food grade citrus degreaser of 90% or higher to strip paint. 8-10 minutes for oil paint, 20-30 for acrylic and water based and you must use a natural fiber brush because it will eat nylon brushes. Paint it on and wait, after stripping the paint; wash off the stripper with water. If you are applying it vertically, add 2-5% cornstarch to thicken it to a gel. If you want to use it to remove automotive paint, add Methyl Ethyl Keton to it.

I also found a post about recycling your oil thinner when you are doing oil painting. You can pour your used thinner into a sludge jar and let it sit for a day. All of the pigments of the paint sink to the bottom and you can pour the clean thinner off of the top. Here is the interesting thing, you can let the sludge sit out in the open (outside) so that the thinner evaporates and collect the pigment off the bottom to make an interesting grey paint. Just scrape the solid out of the bottom, put it with your binder (linseed, walnut, poppyseed oils) and grind the pigment and binder together. You do need specific tools for combining the pigment and oil but buy once, use repeatedly.

I already knew that you could reclaim pastel chips to make new pastels. I use an electric hand held coffee grinder to pulverize the chips (you can combine hard, medium and soft chips but it will give you a less than soft pastel.) to make a fine powder. I pour it out on a piece of glass and make a well in the center. I add drops of rubbing alcohol to the well and mix until you get a smooth paste (you will need to add more drops of alcohol as you mix but go slow). The higher the concentration of alcohol, the better the pastel you can get. You can press the paste into candy molds or just hand roll it. Using thick parchment paper, you can roll the paste into fairly regular sticks. You will make a lot of pastels doing this and will come up with colors that you didn’t have. I bought small plastic containers to separate the different colors into, cool blues, bright reds, ocher yellow or combinations that I want to try; and pulverize them from light to dark. An old/cheap makeup brush to clean out the grinder between grinding helps to retain color purity. Afterwards, I rinse out the grinder at the sink to clean the pigment out of it. I also made sure to mark “Not Food Grade” on it in bold marker so no one uses it for coffee. The pigment will get into the cracks and will never come out, don’t take chances.

I know, I could look all this information up on YouTube but sometimes I don’t know to ask the question. Either way, I do learn a lot while I am waiting on my pharmaceutical routine. What have you found as practical advice? Would you be willing to share? Post on the facebook or instagram link to let others know what you have found! I’m excited to see what you have learned. Talk at you next week.