Background - The Palette

I am self-taught as a painter through books, the Internet and PBS instructional painters (most importantly Jerry Yarnell School of Fine Art). I use Jerry Yarnell’s acrylic palette which you can find on his Web site.

From lower left to upper right, the palette includes these colors: white Gesso, cadmium yellow light, cadmium orange, cadmium red light, Hooker’s green, burnt sienna, ultramarine blue, dioxazine purple, Thalo yellow green, alizarin crimson.

In the photograph, you might see streaks of blue in the white Gesso. I had used this pallet to paint the background for this painting. So, there’s a little blue in the Gesso. I use Gesso instead of white paint because it helps opaque some of the colors that might be more transparent than I would want. Of course, the danger as a novice is that I'll get too much Gesso in the mix because a little bit goes a long way. If I’m not careful, I'll end up with a bucket of the color I’m going for because I had to mix in more paint to offset the Gesso I put into the mix. Ah, well, that’s what this is all about—learning.

As far as the palette box, I’m using a Stay-Wet palette. It is designed to keep the acrylic paint moist enough to use over an extended period of time. This particular palette has a thin sponge that fits in the bottom of the box. There is a special palette paper that you can use with this palette box and I used this system for quite a while. Then I decided to take a hint from Jerry Yarnell. He uses a piece of glass as his paint mixing surface.

So, this is how I assemble my palette box. The yellow sponge is wet almost to the point of dripping wet and laid first in the bottom of the palette box. Then I wet both sides of a piece of white palette paper and put it atop the sponge. The main reason I use the palette paper now is because I don’t want see the yellow under the paint I’m mixing. The white palette paper will work better as a backdrop to my paint mixtures.

After I lay the white palette paper down, I lay down the piece of glass which is maybe ¼" smaller each way than my palette box. As you can see, I’ve folded papers towels and laid them along the left side and top of the palette surface. I find that using the glass helps the paint stay wet longer than just using the palette paper alone.

If I’m painting for a long time, I'll sprits the whole surface with my spray bottle set to the finest mist setting. If I find that my days are too full to paint, I'll check on the palette every other day or so and mist the paint and palette surface. I'll also check to make sure the sponge is still sufficiently wet. If the paint mixtures dry on the glass, I can scrape them off with my palette knife and start over. The actual piece of glass I’m using is from a picture frame I wasn’t using. If all the paints dry out, I simply start over.

If the paints mold, I’m told that won’t affect the painting. Simply scrape off the mold and discard. A couple of things to reduce the likelihood of mold is to use only distilled water in your brush bucket, in your mister bottle, and on your palette. I’ve also heard that if you put the palette box in the frig between painting sessions, the mold will not be such a problem. I may try that this summer as it heats up here in southern Texas.

When I clean up my palette, I'll toss the sponge in the wash by itself to get it good and clean. This doesn’t work with every brand of stay-wet palette, however. I learned that the hard way. The sponge from a competitive brand disintegrated in the wash.