Why is the paint I put on the thing I’m painting still wet, but the paint I got on my shirt already dry?
In: Chemistry
Your shirt is made of fabric, which absorbs moisture pretty well – better than your average wall or whatever. So when the paint hits your shirt, your shirt fairly quickly absorbs the liquid content, which is small enough that it’s almost unnoticeable. The pigments and solids of the paint stay on the outside of the fabric, feeling dry much more quickly than if you were painting on a hard surface.
More paint dries slower. I would assume there isn’t as much paint on your shirt. Not only this, but Your shirt is probably moving around a lot, which exposes it to fresh air and acts like blowing on paint to dry it.
The biggest thing with a process like drying is the amount of surface area exposed compared to the total volume of paint. When you were painting the thing, only the side of the paint facing the air was drying. When it was on your shirt, both sides of the paint were drying, and the shirt also “wicked” out the paint blob to a bigger diameter, increasing the Surface Area to volume ratio more.
Because paint is evil. For example, if you were to spill a can of paint, it will automatically dry extremely quickly to ensure that you can’t clean it up properly. However, if you were to paint a wall in the exact same paint, it will take hours to dry so that you definitely will tarnish your hard work and get paint on you, potentially even tracking it round your house.
It’s also depend on the properties of the material used to for the product you are trying to paint. It’s all about the chemical used in paint its self and the surface you want to paint.
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