Artist's palette accessory and paint storage system

#Oil and acrylic painting, both in studio and outdoors, is becoming a very popular pastime. One of the less appealing tasks involved with painting is that of setting up your palette with the desired colors of oil or acrylic paint and the cleanup once one is finished with a painting session. Artists frequently place a line of fresh paint daubs squeezed from paint tubes along the edge of their palette, paint box, or easel box. They then pick up paint from the daubs to mix together on the palette surface to form the desired colors. Paint is expensive, and artists try and anticipate how much paint they will need of each color. Because acrylic paint dries out within a few hours of leaving the tube, and oil paint hardens through oxidation after a day or so outside the paint tube, artists frequently have to either throw away the paint that remains at the end of a painting session, or try and preserve it for a day or two. Some paint storage systems require that the paint be transferred with a palette knife from the palette into the paint storage container that then must be placed in the freezer if paint is to be saved for more than a couple of days. A lot of paint is lost in the process of moving the paint daubs from one location to another and it is an inconvenient and messy process. A better solution is needed for this problem.

#A solution to the problem of providing a preserving storage accessory for artist paints on a pallet includes the pallet being a tray that fits into a container in a manner which supports the paint on the pallet in a region that will not touch the inner walls of the container during normal use and transportation. Additionally, the container can also hold a paint preservative in a location such that the preservative does not come into direct physical contact with the paint. Fumes emitted from the preservative can contact the paint. The preservative might be a volatile oil that emits fumes, or a humectant that emits water vapor. The paint preservative can operate by emitting fumes that serve to either prevent oxidation or evaporation of the paint. The container being completely or at least partially airtight contributes to performance.

#One mechanical configuration is a V-shaped tray placed in a clear, cylindrical container with end caps. One or both of the end caps can retain a preservative. With appropriate relative sizes between a tray and a container, and with one portion of the tray differentially weighted from other portions of the tray, gravity will turn the tray within the container to keep the paint facing upwards. In another mechanical configuration, the tray has two opposing sides that are curved as a portion of a circle of a slightly smaller diameter than that of the cylindrical container.

#FIG. 1 is a perspective view of the elongated storage tube of the first embodiment, which is cylindrical;

#FIG. 2 is a perspective view of an elongated paint tray on which daubs of paint are placed. This paint tray is designed to fit inside the tube illustrated in FIG. 1;

#FIG. 3 is a perspective view of one end cap onto which wool felt wick has been mounted;

#The palette accessory and paint storage systems presented improve the painting experience, allowing the artist to save time (no need to squeeze out all new fresh paint) and money (no need to discard good paint at the end of a painting session). The paint tray containing the daubs of paint is clipped or attached using Velcro to a paint box or mixing palette, or easel surface. Because any excess paint can be preserved for weeks, the painter is free to place more generous amounts of paint on the paint tray—enough for several paintings, and thus eliminate the interruption of having to squeeze more paint out during a painting session. When necessary, the artist can add new paint to supplement the older paint on the paint tray before a painting session begins. When the artist paints outdoors, it is no longer necessary to bring along all the heavy tubes of paint colors as sufficient paint can be placed on the paint tray ahead of time. Also, while spending several days painting in the field, there is no need to store oil paints in a freezer as the eugenol in the clove oil prevents oxidation at room temperature.

#Once finished with a painting session, the paint tray containing the remaining paint is easily moved as a single unit and placed inside the storage tube until the next painting session—perhaps weeks later. This system has an additional benefit of keeping both the artist's clothing and supplies cleaner and free from errant daubs of paint. The combined system of storage tube, paint tray and end caps make for an efficient and compact manner of storing and transporting paint that has been removed from a paint tube.

#In this first embodiment, the tray is v-shaped and rests in a clear cylindrical tube with end caps. The tray is about the length of the tube and fits in such that the paint is not touching the inner sidewalls. Felt wicks are mounted in the center of the end caps in a location to the side of and above the daubs of oil paint on the tray. This prevents the clove oil itself from touching the paint. This can be important, as paint mixed with clove oil can change the characteristics of the oil paint in a way that is not desirable to most painters. Instead, only the volatile component of the clove oil, eugenol, evaporates into the air space of the storage tube and thus affects only the outermost layer of the paint daubs, preventing the paint from forming a skin and hardening through oxidation.