How do you pour your paints and thinners?

If you do not like to count, or not good at it; buy calibrated pipetts.

I go to Hobby Lobby and buy peippets in the art section. Look in the area of the oil paints and brushes, or I guess order on line.

Using these lets you pull as much or little as needed. I have a jar of lacquer thinner I flush the peippets and clear then for reuse.

Works great, no mess or wasted material.

ps

Got my plastic pipettes on the way.

I was thinking about the glass ones but I didn't want the extra cleanup and with the cheap cost of 200 plastic ones tossing after use is not a big deal.

I never pour paint from the bottle, nor do I shake the bottles for mixing. I use measured pipettes or glass droppers for transferring, I like the glass droppers because they can be cleaned thoroughly after use.

I use the metal Tamiya stirring paddle, to ensure all of the paint solids are scraped off the jar bottom. Then the little electric Badger mixer to completely blend all of the ingredients.

The paints can last for very long periods, when the bottle top rims and threads are kept perfectly clean, dried residue damages the ability for the bottle to maintain an effective seal against air.

The measured pipettes permit accurate amounts of paint/thinner ratios. It does take an extra few minutes to use these steps, but the paint consistency is rather important for me, I like having predictable results when laying on the finish.   

I used straws for years but these days they're so thin and flimsy I had a hard time not dumping the contents between bottles.  Lol. I found some reusable stainless steel straws at Walmart that come with replaceable silicon rubber mouthpieces and cut them to length with a tubing cutter. They work great and will last forever but, you have to clean them. 

So I switched to pipettes. Very inexpensive in bulk on Amazon. I don't attempt to clean them but will reuse them in the same paint while working on a project. They're also very good for stirring. 

Eye/ear droppers from the drug store. They clean up faster the pipettes and last a long time. Here in California we can't buy them at the drug store anymore, so I get them online in "bulk".

Pipette.  I count drops.  very easy and no mess.

I pour paint from the bottle, pouring it down a cocktail stick/toothpick stops it running down the side of the bottle.  I use a pipette for thinners, and decant both into a small plastic cup for mixing.  Add a small amount of thinners to start with, keep mixing & adding more until I like the look of it.

I just pour it from the bottle. If you are careful you can keep it from running down the side.  As soon as  you turn it right side up, wipe the top and threads with a paper towel.

I just get a pack of 100 straws and cut them in half as I need them.  They make great, cheap pipettes.  Just dip the straw, plug the top with your figertip, and transfer the paint.  For thinner, that needs to be more precise, so I have a 3CC glass syringe for that.  I also use little Dixie cups to mix paint and thinner in to get a really thorough mix.  Those work for everything except the ammonia-based MM Acryl paints...ammonia removes the wax almost instantly from the paper in the cup.  

Thanks guys never thought of using pipettes for paint I do use the really narrows ones for getting in tights spaces with thin cyanoacrylate glue when building RC airplanes.

Especially with Tamiya and Model Master acrylics the pipettes already mentioned are great and you can get more exact ratios too. As mentioned the Tamiya jars are hard to pour from. With the MM any residue of paint left when you close up the bottle will have the cap cemented in place. The pipettes eliminate all this.

By the way, get those Tamiya bottles closed up quickly, the alcohol evaporates fairly fast out of those paints if you leave that wide mouthed jar open and start spraying.

I use pipettes as well.  I exclusively use tamiya acrylics with my gravity airbrush.  I put in the thinner first in the airbrush cup and then the paint using pipettes.  Then stir, and cover the tip with a paper towel and backflush a bit, to throughly mix.

I literally count the drops to make the perfect ratio.  I do 2:1, so for example I count 40 drops of thinner then 80 drops of paint.  A bit tedious, but it works perfectly every time.  I don't like eyeballing it as others recommend (to the constancy of milk).  That is too inexact for me and sometimes just doesn't work well.  

I use the clear plastic pipettes, available from any hobby source.  No muss, no fuss.  Squeeze the bulb and suck up the desired amount of paint.

They can be reused many times if you clean them after use,  also cheap enough you can just throw them away