Waste in my closet
And my first blog entry is about… polluting materials.
I’m a little upset about it. When I just started drawing, painting and mixed media at the beginning of 2020, I enthusiastically bought all kinds of materials: acrylic paint, gel medium, modeling paste, texture paste, acrylic binder, various gessos, paint thinners, thickeners, slow dryers, powertex with attached products as 3d flex and stone art, varnishes, filament for my 3d printer…
I don’t want to brand or product sham here, that’s not what this is about, but I wouldn’t buy it now with the knowledge I have now. Even if it is claimed that the product in rinse water is not that bad, I think: yes, but many small bits also make one big one, where the thought that acrylic is just liquid plastic and goes straight down the sink, horrifies me.
I briefly considered throwing away all these products, but…. then they end up in the environment again, and even unused. So they are still in my closet and I will consider them as “waste”. So don’t be surprised if a work of art with acrylic in it suddenly comes along. When it’s gone, I’ll switch all the way to eco-friendly.
Another thing I’d like to share is how I’ll handle the tools I’ve been stirring the acrylic with. I rinse brushes in a bowl of water and then wipe them clean with an old cloth or newspaper. The plastic particles in the tray sink to the bottom and I let the water dry. Then I can use the tray again to rinse. The containers themselves are left over from eating cottage cheese, so no extra investment in plastic containers here either. It’ll be a while before there’s a substantial piece of plastic in the bottom of the tray, but when it does I’ll see if I can work it into some piece.
Other tools I clean as much as possible from old newspapers, which I later use to make a painting or other piece of art.
And so I try to make a virtue of necessity until I can work completely eco-friendly.