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Published: 2006-07-01 02:42:03 +0000 UTC; Views: 73896; Favourites: 1186; Downloads: 903
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No-Sign-of-Sanity’sPalette Tutorial Extravaganza!!!
For all 3 of you who may actually give a shit, this is how I set up my palette to paint in acrylics. By following these steps you can get your acrylics to last on your palette for weeks instead of minutes. What sort of magic is this? Witchcraft you say? Nah it’s just one of the few useful things I actually picked up in art school so I’d thought I’d save you all some big tuition cash, and just post it here.
Step #1. Stop! Palette Time! Get yourself a nice 11”x15” ceramic palette like this one. These things are made of metal and have a super durable ceramic shell. I’ve beaten the hell out of this thing and it’s still no worse for wear. Do you REALLY need one of these to proceed with this tutorial? Hell no. Just get yourself some type of flat container with a decent lip of about a one inch deep. Tupperware, cookie sheets, hell even a lasagna dish will work just as well.
Step #2. Build the foundation. Fill the base of your palette with paper towels. I use about 6 or so overlapping paper towels and that works well for me. Try to keep the surface fairly flat so if you’re building too much thickness in the center of your palette from the towels overlapping, fold a few more paper towels in half and put them on the ends to even it out.
Step #3. Drown it! Fill the palette with water until the towels are soaking wet. Hold the towels in place and drain the palette of any excess water. We want the towels to hold as much water as they possibly can but we’re not making a bowl of soup here. If your palette is too wet, it’ll backfire on you later and your paints will end up getting all soupy from absorbing too much water. Keep reading, it will all make sense it a minute…
Step #4. All air bubbles must die!!! Place your hands in the center of the palette, and working outwards, smooth out the paper towels and try to force any air bubbles that may be in there out to the sides of the palette. It may take a few passes, but you want to end up with a nice flat base of wet paper towels.
Step #5. My pad or yours? Get yourself a nice pad a tracing paper that’s close in size to the palette you’ve selected. Unless you work purely digitally (in which case you probably ain't reading this tutorial), you should have some tracing paper in your art arsenal at all times. It has a plethora (yes jefe, I said “plethora”) of uses. For my palette-making purposes I use Clearprint Vellum. It’s not cheap, but it’s thick and durable so it’s well worth the extra dough.
Step #.6 Tracing paper is not just for tracing. Take a sheet of tracing paper and lay it down over your bed of wet paper towels. . This tracing paper is going to be the actual usable surface our palette. You’ll notice that the paper starts to wrinkle as it soaks up some of the water from the towels. This is normal. Just like in step #4, use your hands to smooth out the tracing paper and rid your self of any air bubbles.
Step #7. Isn’t she lovely? This is our completed and ready to use acrylic-friendly palette. The bed of wet towels underneath the surface will actually re-hydrate the paint as it loses its moisture from being out in the air. Ain’t science cool? Every few days or so you may have to add some more water to the towels underneath to keep them wet and keep the palette going. Just pull up a corner of the tracing paper and pour in the water as needed.
Step #8. Now go paint bitches!!! Since I’m such a detail driven psycho, I find that it helps to do all of my color mixing on the palette before I ever start painting. So here’s an example of the simple grayscale palette I set up to make the Two-Face painting in my gallery. I started with a middle gray tone and I mixed up towards white, and down towards black.
When you’re not using your paints I’d suggest covering the palette with plastic wrap and throwing it the refrigerator. Just because your paints won’t dry out for months doesn’t mean that having a bunch of wet paper towels hanging out in your room forever won’t still grow mold.
I hope that helped!
Related content
Comments: 331
somna-ARTifacts [2011-10-06 19:22:13 +0000 UTC]
thanks SO much for this tutorial!! I just started my first (!!) acrylic painting some days ago and I'm going soooo mad finding my colours completely dried after I simply picked up the phone and talked to someone a "few" minutes".... ^^
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
No-Sign-of-Sanity In reply to somna-ARTifacts [2011-10-06 21:55:09 +0000 UTC]
You're welcome! Be sure to check out this two part acrylic painting tutorial I put together a while ago. It may help you cut thru a bit of the learning curve. Hope it helps!
Page 1 = [link]
Page 2 = [link]
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HeavenlyOdyssey [2011-08-14 22:28:34 +0000 UTC]
Thank odin I found this in the nick of time!
I was literally just on the verge of giving up, I was fed up of my paint drying way too fast even with all the retardent and god knows what else I had lol.
I was in full hissy fit mode when I found this-you sir are a saviour!
Not to mention your work, good grief man you have some talent!
Thank you for sharing this
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
No-Sign-of-Sanity In reply to ramtin-s [2011-08-14 16:01:53 +0000 UTC]
You're very welcome.
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morikun-rinari [2011-07-14 09:26:27 +0000 UTC]
This is definitely useful! I'm going to keep this in mind before I take an acrylic painting course at the community college that I'm currently attending.
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by-anca [2011-06-21 18:57:55 +0000 UTC]
Oh how useful! It always angered me that my acryclics dried too fast, so I moved on to oil. But with oil painting, I spent more money on the solvent, which also stank, and apparently is really bad for people to inhale. Thanks for the tips! I will try this out for the summer.
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Husse1n [2011-06-10 00:30:33 +0000 UTC]
make it 4 who give a shit haha
but thanks soo much for this tip it will help alot and i hate it when my paints start drying so this will fix this situation
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animechan21 [2011-05-07 20:28:19 +0000 UTC]
I don't paint a lot just because of this problem,problem solved!
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tikatran [2011-04-10 23:56:26 +0000 UTC]
Great tutorial, been meaning to try painting for a while and your tips have definately given me a great start ^^
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Prophetella [2011-02-09 20:09:44 +0000 UTC]
3 things--
This works great in one side of a stationary box (little plastic suitcases most often available in Asian mom & pops or fancy pencil work stores)- the lid can seal it up and yep you gots wet palette!
WAX PAPER- yep, I learned to do this using wax paper- cheap palettes cost me less than $2 once ready for paint. A little extender dribbled in is needed even with my expensive air-tight palette if there is no moisture to suck up into the paint and renew it.
And can I link to you for a cheap palette tutorial in this thing ?
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
No-Sign-of-Sanity In reply to Prophetella [2011-02-10 09:36:28 +0000 UTC]
Cool tips! Yeah feel free to link away!
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Prophetella In reply to No-Sign-of-Sanity [2011-02-11 00:42:21 +0000 UTC]
Actually, if the cheap wax paper might have not worked-- the sheets from a disposable palette pad worked much better!
And thanks for the permission!
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K-i-s-s-h-u [2011-02-05 03:38:51 +0000 UTC]
This is AWESOME. Would parchment paper work as well?
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
No-Sign-of-Sanity In reply to K-i-s-s-h-u [2011-02-06 05:57:01 +0000 UTC]
Honestly I'm not sure. You might have to experiment with it and see for yourself. The basic idea is that the paper has to be thin enough for the water to seep thru it to hydrate the paint, yet durable enough that the water won't break the paper down and turn it into a pile of mush.
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FuriManiac [2011-01-15 23:16:41 +0000 UTC]
Wow wehh that helps a lot in not throwing away paint.
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Drachechen [2011-01-08 02:09:15 +0000 UTC]
Really awesome tutorial! Recently painted some large ceramic pieces with acrylic and had I know of this technique ahead of time, it probably would have saved me a good deal of paint. Thanks to your tutorial though, I can now save on paint as well as money for future projects. Thanks so much!
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SleepingDeadGirl [2011-01-05 18:45:51 +0000 UTC]
This is great, thank you! I'm working on my first effort-worthy acrylic painting right now (or at least; am going to start over it tonight :S) and this will be EXTREMELY helpful! I HATE having to try and figure out the exact "mixology" of colours I used before because my paints had dried up!
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
No-Sign-of-Sanity In reply to SleepingDeadGirl [2011-01-05 23:06:36 +0000 UTC]
Glad I could help! Also I put together a 2-page tutorial on acrylic painting techniques that you can check out if you're interested.
Page 1 = [link]
Page 2 = [link]
Again glad I could help! Good luck to you!
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
SleepingDeadGirl In reply to No-Sign-of-Sanity [2011-01-06 01:02:58 +0000 UTC]
Thanks, these are very helpful!
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
LaraMuk [2010-09-09 13:45:46 +0000 UTC]
well thats quite a way to do it! never thought about that lol i always just slapped some tin foil over my pie tin of paint and left it, seemed to work too.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
effuchu [2010-08-28 04:58:12 +0000 UTC]
wow, this is incredibly useful to know!
thank you! i'm sick and tired of my acrylics drying out on me. C:
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
SaintEnds [2010-06-16 11:16:34 +0000 UTC]
Just seeing this for the first time -- thank you for the tip.
~Nicholas
p.s.
Caught the "Three Amigos" reference buried in there, too!!
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
MissterAndy In reply to ??? [2010-05-26 22:20:47 +0000 UTC]
Awesome, I'm always trying to find a way to make my supplies last longer! Thank you for uploading such a wonderful resource!
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Dancing-Pinky-Flower In reply to ??? [2010-05-09 17:42:17 +0000 UTC]
Whenever I paint, I use this! Totally awesome and a great idea. Still can't get over it.
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MultiLock [2010-05-06 14:33:52 +0000 UTC]
Omfg, it's so simple yet so brilliant. I can't believe I never knew or been told a bout this method, seems so amazing, cheers dude ^^ I am one of the people who gave a crap, so thank you
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ArtemisChick [2010-04-15 23:14:42 +0000 UTC]
Gracias for makin this so nice n step by step!! imma go do it now^^
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LyndseyWells In reply to ??? [2010-03-01 14:02:25 +0000 UTC]
That's very useful! I threw away so much paint because it got dry... -_-
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Nobody-said-so In reply to ??? [2010-02-15 21:24:02 +0000 UTC]
I almost always waste my paint because I don't know how to save it.
Not anymore, though. Thank you!
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spetsnazmelayu [2010-01-12 09:42:45 +0000 UTC]
Wait, how do you clean this after using it? Hope you to answer because I'm looking for a good way to use a palette, thanks.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
No-Sign-of-Sanity In reply to spetsnazmelayu [2010-01-12 13:53:13 +0000 UTC]
You take the tracing paper off and throw it away. You add a new piece of tracing paper on top of the paper towels and you're ready to painting again. The adavantage to using this method is that you're not scraping dried paint off of the surface of the palette. You're just throwing the tracing paper out and replacing it with a fresh piece. Clean-up should take seconds instead of minutes. You nly need to replace the paper towels if you've been using this palette for a few weeks and they are starting to stink / get moldy.
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spetsnazmelayu In reply to No-Sign-of-Sanity [2010-01-12 15:40:13 +0000 UTC]
Ah I understand now. Thank you very much, good sir.
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dia-aren-marie [2010-01-03 18:24:15 +0000 UTC]
Interesting! I think I'll have to try this. Thanks a million!
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
nitoa [2009-12-28 22:11:11 +0000 UTC]
Thank you for such an awesome tutorial. :] I'm just now learning how to paint with acrylics, so this will definitely be helpful.
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slippyninja [2009-12-07 20:10:38 +0000 UTC]
recently i am mostly digital (no mess) but this helps me tremendously. Thank you for sharing.
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evil666lollypop [2009-11-09 21:34:24 +0000 UTC]
D:
YOU ARE MY HERO.
I have a huge piece that I'm starting tomorrow for my portfolio and it's all in acrylic paint...and 20x24". So yeah. You just saved me. Hahah.
Thank you!!
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
ChibiCookieGirl [2009-10-17 09:09:35 +0000 UTC]
YOU ARE GOD!!!!
(or something close to it)
i was always worried about trying acrylic paints because i am a pretty slow artist, but this tutorial has opened a new door in art! thank you so so much!
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
FoolySpoons [2009-08-06 20:34:18 +0000 UTC]
Ooo, nice trick. I find acrylics to be rather annoying, as they seem to dry too quickly, which is why I don't usually paint with them. This, however, might cure a lot of my frustration. Thanks for sharing!
By the way, do you have any idea if wax paper would work in place of the tracing paper?
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
No-Sign-of-Sanity In reply to FoolySpoons [2009-08-06 22:58:26 +0000 UTC]
Nope. Wax paper won't work as it's not porous at all and won't let any water seep thru it. I've been told silicone baking sheets work well for these wet palette but I've never tried them myself.
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