Dead paint file?

[Marc]

A some point without paying too much intention, I started putting paint tubes I'd decided to never use again into a plastic bag. I guess, I'm an entry level hoarder. I couldn't bother selling them, didn't want to throw them out. I recently used up the last of a tube of cadmium red from the late 70's and I felt I can't throw this old friend out. So I kept the empty tube. The old label I also feel nostalgic about. It came from the city of my youth which due to an earthquake no longer exists, and I absolutely hate the latest Winsor & Newton oil tube labels.
Now a small fancy cardboard clothing box of the sort that has a sliding drawer with a silk loop handle ( hoarder again, "this is too nice to throw out.") is the new home of my dead paint tubes.

Does anyone else have a dead paint file?

 

[Artyczar]

I do not, but I have probably done similar things in the past. In recent years I've been trying to minimize my life more, but I haven't done much progress.

 

[classic]

I don't like to throw away things, and this is the case for art supplies.
I still suffer from loosing a lot of Talens gouache tubes, Winsor & Newton brushes and other art things almost 10 years ago. They were stored in a drawer. I was away for a few days, and family had to arrange the room in a different manner. They put all of them in a plastic bag. After that I didn't find them anywhere in the house. Nobody could give me any useful info. Some of the tubes were quite old so it is probable that they were already dry. Nevertheless this remains a sad memory for me, perhaps much more for the gouache tubes than for the (more expensive) brushes.
I still hope that a day I could discover that old bag in a storage place. Am I too sentimental?

About throwing away old things: a friend of mines was a scale model hobbyist (he even became a professional of models for some years). I remember he told me that one can use anything that seems useful for model details, so a model maker keeps anything. The same is true for the electronics hobbyists too,

 

[Marc]

I still hope that a day I could discover that old bag in a storage place. Am I too sentimental?

As a teenager I once lost 3years of monthly magazines. They weren't where I put them and I drove my family mad all week looking for them. But, poof! They were gone. It didn't make any sense at all. How could such a sizable box just disappear? Then twenty years later I got a call from my mother. "Are you going to take these magazines or shall I throw them out??"

 

[Marc]

My dead file started when I started testing the lightfastness of my colours. Some failed quite dramatically and I thought, well, I can't use that anymore. Actually, I think that's another reason I didn't want to sell them. How could I pass something on that failed?

 

[P. Barrie]

Ha, I still have a tube of Cad Red I got in the 70s! very concentrated pigment that goes a long way. I only use it for special. I get perplexed about tossing paint, even done tubes, more about toxins in the environment. Rags, paper palettes, etc. as well.

 

[Bongo]

I have/had a lot of Golden's 5oz. paint pots. They no longer make the 5oz size - now 8oz and up. I held on to the empties for a long time. They are a nice size with screw-on caps - but I just couldn't think of anything to put in them. I still have a half dozen or so of ones that still have some paint in them.

I also have about a dozen empty old-style Rotring ink bottles. The cap incorporates a glass ink dropper. Just to see - I put one on ebay and it sold for $10.

Collector - accumulator - hoarder can be a slippery slope. I buy gesso by the gallon and use to buy Yupo paper by the 60" x 10' roll.
I use to keep the empties - not out of nostalgia - but sort of as an affirmation that I'm a painter. Then realized making good paintings would be better "proof".

Marc - you could mount that empty tube with the fawn label onto a plaque - then toss the rest.

 

[AES]

I have a dead pen file. I am incapable of throwing away gel pens, no matter how crappy. I used to empty the ink into pots and paint with it, but I haven't done that in years. Still keep the pens though.

That historical tube sounds cool. You should put it in a display box.

 

[Marc]

Ha, I still have a tube of Cad Red I got in the 70s! very concentrated pigment that goes a long way. I only use it for special. I get perplexed about tossing paint, even done tubes, more about toxins in the environment. Rags, paper palettes, etc. as well.

Ah, Rembrandt. Those paints have never been sold in my small New Zealand city. Though they must have been on sale somewhere here, because I recently saw a 70's Rembrandt Flake white in a cashe of lesser paints being sold online at the other end of the country. Pickup only though, And I didn't want to buy all this student stuff to get it. So......

 

[Marc]

That historical tube sounds cool. You should put it in a display box.

I suppose I could put it in the sideboard glass cabinet along with the few other memorial objects already in there. I hadn't thought of that.