Mixing paint from pots accurately

[Scherdy]

Thanks beforehand first of all. This site and community in itself is an incredible resource.

I have a wide variety of paint brands and am occasionally getting frustrated when unable to mix a particular color from the non-dropper bottle paints because it\'s not as easy as 2 drops of color A and 3 drops of color B from a dropper bottle. Makes it hard to stop, come back and easily recreate the color I was using.

Is there a smarter way any of you use to easily get the correct amount of paint from the paint pots without so much trial and error of dipping the brush?

disposable pipettes or eyedropers? (I think they\'d be hard to wash...not very eco-friendly if I\'m throwing them away all the time)

Is transferring whole pots of paint into dropper bottles worth it? Any insights on how to make that as painless as possible if this is the way to go?

 

[freakinacage]

welcome to the site. personally i don\'t mix paint as accurately as you described. i know a lot of people transfer their paints to dropper bottles. as for the pippette\'s, they shouldn#t be hard to clean. just make sure that you don\'t pick up too much paint in one go and wash through several times with warm, soapy water after (ie before the paint dries!). hope this helps

 

[lizcam]

I use a drinking straw as a pipette. After a bit of experimenting I figured out that 1) The paint in the pots I have tend to be a bit thicker so I need less and 2) the drops are larger so that cuts the # down as well. For me it works out to 1/2 the number of drops from a pot as from a dropper bottle. But the straw is pretty wide. You\'ll have to play with it a bit.

 

[Yetie]

nice one lizcam, I was going to make a thread on this subject as I was having the same problem. And welcome Scherdy

 

[Ritual]

I usually use a toothpick to transport paint out of the pots on to my pallette. Then I just count the number of times I dip the toothpick in the pot. Every time a small amount of paint is tansferred so I can get pretty accurate if needed.

 

[Swordwind]

I got my pipettes from Stafford market for 15p each.