DIY Tip: Restoring Dried Up Watercolour Paint in Tubes

Wondering what to do with watercolour paint that have dried up? How to restore and use the paint again? This article will show you how!

Equipment:

• Dried up watercolour paint in tube
• Container - please try to find one that is deep enough to hold paint. Make sure if put in liquid it won't be able to leak into the other compartments. Also it would be good if there's a nice lid to cover the paint as well. I used a coin bank container that is only a dollar (AUD) from a dollar shop!
• Water
• Cutter
• Paint spatula or a small stick

Steps:

1. Plan out where each colour would go. For me I put the lighter colours (white, yellow, light brown) on the right and darker colours (green, blue, purple and black) on the left, while the red colours would be in the middle.
2. Make sure the paint has all dried up before cutting them open. They should be hard to touch and impossible to squeeze.
3. Carefully cut open the tube with a cutter and transfer the dried paint to a piece of paper. Then, carefully pour them into the compartment.
4. If you accidentally opened a tube with wet paint (like I did with the blue one), push all the paint out, use a foil from one of the emptied tubes to scrap the paint into the box.
5. Transfer the wet paint in tubes to the container as well.
6. Pour a bit of water into the dried up paint. Using a paint spatula or stick, break the paint to fit into the compartment so the paint looks more flat and uniform.
7. Wait for the paint to fully dry up. Then viola! You can start using the paint for your watercolour painting.

Coin bank container that I bought from a dollar shop.

Pentel Watercolours with 14 colours that have been dried up are now transferred to the container ready to be used!