A few years back in school I had the brilliant idea to "reuse" the extra acrylic paint on the palette that I didn't use before cleaning it off or rather not washing it (therefore, drying up and becoming useless - unless chipped off and glued onto/mixed into something).
Before cleaning up-I took extra scraps of paper/canvas/whatever and painted the extra acrylic on as backgrounds for future work! Even as an "ugly" shade - it could be used in a collage of sorts - or a test subject.
Now, to add to this idea - comes treated cardboard, shrink wrap, styrofoam and anything else that can no longer go to the recycling center (or if you can't make it there). They simply become canvases! Or stuff for sculptures or even in place of other things.
A few examples:
When my friend got her first tattoo - we lived in the dorms. We didn't use a lot of plastic wrap and therefore, didn't have any around to protect the fresh body art. I saved the shrink wrap on the little canvases I bought at the school store (cause I HATE throwing things away that I know can be reused) and voila - tat protection!
Now, I'm thinking soap bar boxes for card holders, toilet paper rolls for mini rolled portfolios, microwave diner boxes for actual canvas! Treated cardboard cannot be recycled and people have more than enough!
Not sure about styrofoam, yet - but we have plenty of that, too!
Traditional painters prime their canvases - why can't we do the same with other surfaces? Too brown, you say? Paint it white. Or collage with bits of left over scraps painted similar shades of acrylic!
It's hard to care for the earth when you know you have to use new paper for a studio class or hear how bad oils/other paints effect life. It breaks my heart and if I'm full of cheese - so be it! Feel free to share stuff you do to recycle with art (and supplies) in the comments.
Sure, half of you say, "Well, duh - we do that already!" However, maybe someone is struggling and they may get other ideas just from reading this - that's why I'm putting out there!
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