Palettes for minis & an Interactive Paints WIP

As long as I'm posting I thought I'd also post my WIP here- the goose is started in the new interactive paints. The bg I did with regular acrylics. Not quite finished yet with that but nearly. Wanted a more "fresh spring" quality so trying to use the pretty "Gail" colors (for those who read this from the miniature forum- for other readers she is a friend of mine who also paints miniatures). :-) You can see the purple lavendar area where I "messed about" a bit too much so it is blotchy and will have to be worked on. But it ofcourse is not finished anyway so no big deal...

I thought since I was doing this to try and answer Mona's questions I may as well go a bit more "in depth" on my palettes and experiments. So here is a bit more explanation on them and some photos to help you see them better (I hope!)

This first image is one of my "experimental" palettes. It is a shallow food container with simple paper towels under the palette paper. I've also tried it with sponges cut up to fit. It worked fine- kept the paint moist for days, etc. but I just can't deal with the depth. It is maybe 2-2.5" deep as opposed to the true palettes which are much shallower. So if you want an inexpensive wet palette and can deal with the depth this worked well.

Hopefully you can see and compare the depths on these 2 palettes. That's my finger you can see on the left holding the deeper one so you can get a feel for the size maybe. The one below that is the palette I believe Mona is curious about. My Masterson wet palette is very similar in depth to this one also.




These 3 photos are the palette Mona was asking about- it doesn't need palette paper, acrylics and caseins can be cleaned off easily after drying. If the paint is deep enough you can just peel it off. If you are like me and use it thinly and sparingly and end up with very thin films dried on you can just scrape it off. I happen to have an old "putty knife" type thing that is made of plastic rather than metal so doesn't scratch the palette. It worked very well. Possibly with "elbow grease" you could just scrub it off, but I was too lazy to try that when I had my putty knife! I believe these palettes would be absolutely ideal for water color and gouache. You can see the rubber seal on the lid. I've left one tab open on the photo of the closed palette so you can see it. The 4 sides "snap" into place. A bit tricky at times to get them to stay but they do seal very well. I put cut up household sponges in the little wells and wet them- the paints stay moist very well. I think gouache and wc would stay moist and you then could have your intense colors that you get with them when they first come out of the tube because you wouldn't have to re-wet to activate them. Just a thought.



These last photos are of my Masterson wet palette. These palettes (I have this one small one and several larger ones- I've had one for probably 20 years or more!) are my favorites. My first old one is the best- it is from the period when companies still cared what their customers thought and wanted. Masterson was (at that time) very good, helpful, etc. That first palette has little "hold down" tabs which held the palette paper in place. They would replace them (free!) if you lost them (I never did). They no longer make them with those tabs so the paper curls up unless you buy their more expensive paper (so- what do you do if they go out of business?) It was so much better in its original form. We won't go into my lastest experiences with their customer service- suffice it to say, I no longer think so highly of them. Thus- pennies in the corners to hold down the paper. I've pulled back the paper so you can see the yellow sponge, a very thin sponge. The older one also had a very different type sponge- also much better. These sponges when they dry get all contorted and you can NOT close the lid of the palette. I haven't figured out a way to dry them out and keep them flat, and you certainly don't want to leave them wet constantly. Again- the company doesn't seem to care. Obviously these must be cheaper sponges. But I do like the shape, the choice of sizes, etc. and haven't found another I like as well.

Hopefully this explains all this for you. Again, if you have any questions on anything, paints, brushes, etc.- please feel free to ask. I will do my best to answer you.