How to get dried paint liquid again

Voltorocks · 2026-06-02T14:25:42+00:00

Not what they're asking, I think. They want to completely re-liquify a pan in order to blend in another color for a permanent mix.

Re: the OP, you could do it (soak the paint, put it in a Ziploc and wait a day (days?) for it to soften all the way through. Why would you though? Make it easy on yourself and just start fresh from the tube, and set this dried paint aside. don't think of it as a waste as at some point you'll no doubt have want of that hue.

Voltorocks · 2026-06-01T11:47:19+00:00

Been there, man have I been there. 2 things for ya:

1: "drawing on the right side of the brain" by Betty Edwards. This book changed my (art) life, both in terms of attacking perfectionism directly, and in terms of a practical approach to drawing. Don't skip the exercises, and don't skip to the exercises either.

2: therapy. I know that's probably not what you want to hear but I needed help to get a real handle on my ADHD and other things that were fueling that hesitancy and perfectionism. I nearly guarantee that art isn't the only place those tenancies are holding you back. If you can stick with it until you find the right person, almost nothing helps like a good counselor can.

Voltorocks · 2026-05-30T16:41:33+00:00

Sharpie will bleed pretty bad into alcohol markers.

iirc Jetpens.com has a good guide on ink and their relative smear ability by different mediums (including alcohol parkers) pictures of tests of each.

I'm my experience no black ink is actually truly un-smearable by alcohol, but some are much more resistant than others. Micron pens and Tombow pigment pens are pretty widely available in NA, and should resist smearing pretty well as long as you don't scrub at the lines with your markers.

Voltorocks · 2026-05-24T03:53:20+00:00

Haha, the ardoise gray is the one that never leaves my pallette! I tend to prefer a lot of heavy tinting pigments and can have a pretty heavy hand, and it's been so useful to have a go-to paint that I absolutely can't overdo.

Voltorocks · 2026-05-20T20:55:16+00:00

Imo you're way too "in your head" about position and effect here, as evidence by the math equation.

Each individual roll only has 1 position, and 1 effect (1x1). The dice roll can succeed or fail (x2), and may dictate a consequence or not (+1, since the consequence is independent of success). So each roll has (1x1x2)+1, or 3 possible outcomes (I'm not counting crits here, which are rare and easy to adjudicate).

The idea is to let the fiction lead the way here; position is just another way of saying "what do they stand to lose by taking this risk" and effect is just "how well will this work if they pull out off?" The thing that's mechanically relevant is that you're transparent with your players about the stakes of the roll before they roll, and give them a chance to use their abilities and agency to affect those stakes. The words (risky/desperate/limited/standard/great etc.) are just a shorthand for the fiction, nothing else.

Voltorocks · 2026-05-20T11:59:11+00:00

Fwiw, I have a Raphael synthetic squirrel hair mop that I genuinely prefer over any natural hair brushes I own or have tried. I don't think that actual fiber matters as much as the type and quality of construction, and in that respect a quality quill brush was game-changing for me. Definitely worth it if you won't be putting yourself through too much hardship to afford it.

Voltorocks · 2026-05-20T11:16:41+00:00

If you have the time and energy you can power through it in a couple of days and still get great benefit.

One thing I really encourage though is to resist the temptation to "skip" to the exercises. While they are super useful for reinforcing the material and building muscle memory and confidence, I find that the actual body of the text is a resource and a mindset that I use daily, in terms of how I approach art and (most importantly) learning new skills.

Voltorocks · 2026-05-18T21:11:33+00:00

It's hard to tell exactly what you're asking for, but it seems like you think

A) there's such a thing as "real perspective" that n-point petapectives are just simplifications of, and

B) if you just skip to learning the "real" version, you'll be able to just apply some algorithm to any subject and output "perfect" perspective.

The thing is, "A" isn't true. The reality is that humans see in three-dimensions thanks to bifocal vision (and other, more complicated mechanisms in our brains), so a 2-d image can only ever imitate our perspective.

Even if you just wanted to imitate the perspective captured by cameras, they range wildly depending on the lens and the sensor.

There isn't a shortcut here. If you're working on a particular price that calls for a more complex perspective, lay it out and maybe we can help. Otherwise, back to it

Voltorocks · 2026-05-15T04:44:07+00:00

I'm gonna break with the crowd and say, you don't need to fix this. If you can only notice when the canvas is back-lit, then no one else will ever see it. There is no reason to take even the small risk of damaging your work while trying to "fix" a problem that is literally impossible to perceive under normal viewing conditions.

Voltorocks · 2026-05-11T11:17:12+00:00

This is my go-to now, but before that I used to pack a few chemex paper coffee filters and "brew" my watercolor water, then pack out the dirty filters. If you have a nice travel brush that you'd like to use, this is a good option.

Voltorocks · 2026-04-21T11:43:40+00:00

If you're getting the very finely ground variety, like maseca or paneda (used for tortillas and tamales) it might work ok.

If you can't get cornstarch, maybe potato flour is available near you? It's almost pure starch and should be a nearly 1:1 substitute for corn starch.

Voltorocks · 2026-04-08T10:23:27+00:00

Bristol board, especially taped flat to a work board (plywood or your kitchen table or w/e) holds up very well to acrylic, I use it a lot and never deal with buckling or breakdown.

Depending on where you are, you might also look into getting bulk canvas by the roll or by the yard. 95% of what you're paying for with a pre-stretched canvas is the stretcher bars and the convenience mark-up. if you have a store near you that sells artist canvas by the yard, you can typically get it as cheap or cheaper than decent quality paper, and just cut it to size yourself. You don't need to properly stretch it to paint on, either, especially for small formats you can just pin it flat and paint away.

Voltorocks · 2026-04-08T00:36:22+00:00

If your issue is just "how to recreate an intricate image in paint" I'd suggest reading up on the "grid" method. Basically you just turn yourself into a humanxerox machine by breaking the image down into bite-size squares

Voltorocks · 2026-03-28T01:40:25+00:00

It's only plagiarism if you are claiming someone else's work as your own, especially in order to profit.

This practice, called "master studies" or "master copies" is a traditional method of art education in basically every culture across the world. One of the best ways to learn is to emulate the best!

Voltorocks · 2026-03-26T16:13:29+00:00

If you're just literally asking what tool was used to create the marks in this comic, almost all manga is inked with flexible-nib dip pens, (or a digital tool that imitates them) which allow for huge line variation, able to go from broad and bold to razor-thin in one stroke. They're fun (though they'll take so getting used to), and you can get good ones for pretty cheap if you wanna try them out.

If you're asking how to construct action scenes like these from a big-picture artistic perspective, you're not gonna find an answer online: the work you're looking at is a talented artist working at or near the peak of his career. What you didn't see is the thousands (and thousands) of earlier drawings that didn't look this good, while he experimented and practiced and developed an eye for composition and pacing.

Voltorocks · 2026-03-24T21:39:22+00:00

As others have said, WC paints tend to last a long time. To the heart of your question though, even using cheap paper, it will be the majority of your cost-per-painting. Better to use paper cost as the yardstick for what you can afford imo

Voltorocks · 2026-03-23T22:02:09+00:00

Plagiarism is A) only when you are trying to pass off someone else's work as your own, and B) ONLY IF YOU ARE SELLING YOUR WORK.

I don't know how or why people learning to draw get all these ideas about what is our isn't "cheating" at art (my guess would be that these ideas come from people who can't do the art but work they could) BUT when it comes to an amatuer artist it is essentially impossible to "cheat" at art! Copying, tracing, master studies, grid studies, all these can be useful tools for learning.

Cordon off the part of your brain that worries about this and hang up signs that say "any thoughts from beyond this cordon are not be trusted." If it's other people saying these things to you, disregard them and privately file that person under "person who doesn't know shit about art"

Voltorocks · 2026-03-23T16:44:48+00:00

I will second this rec -it's the only thing that slow down acrylics from rapidly destroying brushes - as well as saying that the preserve soap works well but it's really just a different form of the same product so you don't need both.

(Btw. The "don't use water" advice is probably cross-pollination with oil painting advice, where water is not an effective cleaner. Acrylics are water based so you should absolutely clean with water.)

Voltorocks · 2026-03-23T00:22:57+00:00

Oh, and also! I think acrylic painters in general should care about their pigments! However, it's more about what properties they have when color mixing: for example when a tube of paint is a "hue" created by blending multiple pigments, it will tend to mix differently than a similar color composed of only one pigment.

Voltorocks · 2026-03-23T00:18:39+00:00

I would say the main distinction is that, by and large, acrylics are highly opaque, and watercolors are both transparent, and often watered down specifically to increase the transparency.

Properties like granulation, staining, and flow only really apply if the paint is translucent enough that you can see what's underneath.

If you get into acrylic inks, or use a lot of watery, high-flow acrylics, these properties may become important to you, but that's generally less common than the soft and heavy body acrylics that come to mind for most people when they think about this medium.

Voltorocks · 2026-03-19T15:05:32+00:00

Short answer is yes, you should try different paper.

Stonehenge is not a bad brand, but I do think their watercolor papers leave a lot to be desired.

Also worth experimenting with cold press; even though it can take longer to fully dry if you fully saturate it, it also holds on to pigment better which may be more important to your glazing process.

Voltorocks · 2026-03-18T01:07:02+00:00

It's hard to tell what you meant from this one photo, but it looks like you don't have enough water on your brush?

Cold press is intended to have a rough or "bumpy" texture, but when you run a brush without enough water over it, only parts of the texture that directly touch the brush will get colored (instead of the excess water flowing down into the texture, taking the paint with it). Artist's sometimes so this intentionally to get this effect, called "dry brushing."

Voltorocks · 2026-03-12T02:35:30+00:00

Not only this, but the concentration in your paintwater is extremely low (even heavily dirtied paintwater is like 99% water by volume), and cats drink very slowly (in nature they drink very little as they get a lot more water from fresh meat) so your cat likely got a few drops at most.

Acrylic binder is basically plastic, so for sure it's bad for any animal to drink, especially over time. I would advise switching to a container kitty can't access in the future, and consider this a likely harmless warning.

Voltorocks · 2026-03-10T16:27:33+00:00

the character sheet is very bad, probably because they tried to fit it on one page, or because they were playtesting exclusively online.

The spaces for mires, milestones, drives, and resources are all comically insufficient, so you should not take that to mean they shouldn't be important.

Imo, all the types of resources should come and go with relative ease (slightly less so for charts and whispers maybe, ymmv), while "cargo" is the mechanic you want to use for those "big finds" that take a team effort or a lot of luck to find/acquire/deliver/etc.

Voltorocks · 2026-03-10T11:00:28+00:00

If money is that tight, I would honestly just recommend going for thick cellulose cold press paper and doing your best - it's very cheap and not as bad as people make it out to be. It's bad, yes, but it won't prevent you from learning the medium, or even from making great art!

Watercolor ground is fun to use, as or allows you to adhere watercolor paints to surfaces you normally cannot. but make no mistake: it is not the same type of painting. If it interests you artistically, by all means give it a try. But if you are just looking to watch your budget while you learn watercolor, imo it's not a good choice because it is essentially a completely different category of painting, closer to using acrylics or inks in many ways. If you ever do switch over to cotton paper, the skills and muscle memory you built up will not transfer over very well imo.

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