Reviving Dried Up Watercolor

Don't throw out those rock-hard tubes! That paint can be revived.

It’s an in-between week. Our series on intutitive painting will continue next week.

This week, I thought I’d share some tips for dealing with dried-up or crumbly watercolor paint, both on your palette wells and in tubes.

In this video, I’ll talk about

• how (and why) to revive dried paint back to its out-of-the-tube consistency before adding more paint to a palette well

• how to level out the color in your palette wells, so it dries into a flat cake instead of a mound or blob

• how you may be able to soften dried up paint in a tube, so you can actually squeeze some out without resorting to cutting the tube open (doesn’t always work with really old tubes, but it’s definitely worth a try before cutting!)

You might also want to check out an earlier video on how to easily remove a stuck cap (without resorting to pliers) and a video that includes instructions how to clean a palette well that’s become contaminated with another color (go to timestamp 1:35).

NOTE: There appears to be a problem with the video not showing up in the Substack Reader app. It’s working fine on the web version, so I’m going to have to talk to Substack support to figure out what’s going on.

In the meantime, you can watch it in the web version of this post by pasting this link into your browser on your phone or tablet: https://lynnebaur.substack.com/p/reviving-dried-up-watercolor

UPDATE: I think I may have it fixed (as of 7:35 pm PST, Friday, Oct 20). If anyone is still not seeing the video, could you please leave a comment letting me know whether you’re trying to view it in a browser, in the iOS Substack app or in the Android Substack app? Thanks for the help!

If the trick for softening up paint in a tube doesn’t work and you have to cut open the tube, Kathy Weller has already made a great comprehensive video about this: