Instead of throwing old t-shirts, table cloths, etc. into the trash bin or donating them, try cutting them apart into rags – that way you can toss, when they’re yucky. And cotton ones work the best.

Or, if t-shirts are not part of your life, try finding them cheap at Goodwill or some other Thrift store. I can get about 6-8 rags out of one shirt.

Coming to think of it, you might also try buying an old sheet (obviously: find some that aren’t disgusting…) at Goodwill – that should last you loooong.

I get left over towels, linen and sheets from estate sales and tear / cut them up. They throw out so much…. if you ask they might be happy to let you have the unsaleable linens… or sell you whats left at the end of a sale for cheap.

I use kitchen paper towels for getting excess oil colors off my brushes before thorough cleaning with turpentine and soap. It is a squeezing and up-down bending action between my fingers, i.e. not just a simple wiping action. I don’t throw the paper towel away after each cleaning as the same paper towel can brush clean more than once.

At the same time, I have a cloth towel rag handy to clean off oil colors that get on my fingers, say before washing my hands with soap and water. The cloth rag is not thrown away after it gets too dirty. It is washed and reused more than once.

Rags and old t-shirts that became artist clothes and then became rags!

I use a load of rags, each painting about 4 A4 size rags ! in oils the cleaning process takes a lot, so i snatch some kitchen papper roll stuff and that’s it. Acrylics you can wash the rags clean as long as it does go dry the paint.

You learn at LOT when you’re father is an artist, in Montmatre Paris, and you’re mother does watercolours and your brother is also an artist…and you’ve been to art college too. I learnt mostly from watching the artists paint on the Place du Tertre back in the 1970’s 80’s.

I use doctors throw away latex gloves about 100 pairs every 6 weeks. I paint 3 big formats a week. It’s average production rate. My father somedays would hammer out 4 paintings around 24″ x 36″ in figurative. They paint very fast on the Place du Tertre mostly with Palette knives then, the details with what the locals call a ‘trenard’ a very thin long paintbrush for details.

Rags rags rags… I use Jay cloths in 100metre rolls that cut off every 15 inches… great stuff. The only dumb thing I do is pour the turps down the SINK !!! talk about pollution… I know, I know it’s unacceptable.

I use the t-shirt material from my husbands old undershirts and old cotton flannel baby blankets (a heavier rag when you need them).

I also save the old telephone books. All you really have to do is have the cover cut off at the glue and leave on your palette table. Then you wipe your brush (or fold over a corner an wipe both sides. When the top page is full simply peel off the page at the glue side and you have another clean surface. Our yellow pages (we get 2 free a year around here and with the internet never really use them for the phone) were really just too big for my table or palette, so, I’ve split these in half through the glue and made shorter stacks, but, this is a pain. They do last a while, though.

On a side note, I found an amazing thing to clean your hands of the oil paint. (I’m really messy, so you may not need this.) But, I hated those chemicals on my hands and they were drying out. I had this old bottle of creamy baby oil that was given to me with my littlest. It’s made by Baby Magic and looks like hand lotion, but is made with mineral oil. I just sqeeze out a dime size and rub it all over my hands, then wipe them with one of my rags. It works REALLY well, and my hands have done so much better since. A regular bottle will probably last 6 months to a year.

Rags are much nicer to use than paper towels, they last longer and are more durable. Like others on this forum, I turn my old clothes into painting cloths, then the painting clothes become rags. So the original clothes are reincarnated 2 times!

Kathy Hodge
my website...http://www.kathyhodge.com
my blog...http://hodge-artandnature.blogspot.com/

I feel nervous about throwing away disposable paper towels with oils & mediums on them, so I use an old t-shirt instead.

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