Hello everyone!🎨 I thought I would do a quick post on how to make a wet palette. If you've ever used acrylics, you may know the struggle of them drying too quickly on the palette, plate, tin foil, whatever you may use. Considering I'm a person who takes their time painting, I needed a solution for this.
After some searching I found a wet palette that I could purchase. Being the cheap person I am, I thought, there has to be a way to just make one. Some more research I found many helpful and simple tutorials. I'll share how I do it here.
Here are the things you'll need
- Kitchen roll/paper towels
- Wax paper, NOT parchment paper, it must be WAX paper
- For your palette a metal tin with a lid, tubberware container, glass plate, glass palette, anything you want that won't get damaged by water!
Step One
Here I have an old colored pencil tin. You don't have to use a tin, you can use whatever you want. You can use a glass plate, a plate covered in tin foil, a plastic Tupperware container, whatever can hold water. The nice thing about a tin, or something with a lid, is that you can put a lid on. If you have a lid your paints can stay wet for a few days. One time I had left paints sit for almost a week and they were still ready to use.
Step Two
Line the bottom of whatever you're using with paper towels or kitchen roll. I have never used any fabric for this, but that might also work. Just know the fabric will get ruined, if you can see the bottom of my tin is stained with paint, so, keep that in mind.
Step Three
Next, you want to get the paper towel completely wet! Every inch of it needs to be wet. As I mentioned you can use any surface that can take on water.
Step Four
Once you have the paper towel completely wet, drain out the excess water. You don't want puddles of water remaining, you just want to make sure the paper towel is completely saturated.
Step Five
Now, you're going to put the wax paper directly on the paper towel and smooth it out.
And That's It!!!
This is the same palette I made, with paint that's been on there for over five hours! I also had left it until later in the evening without the lid and most the paint was still wet! Now, sometimes the top portion of the paint gets a little dry, if this happens spritzing the top with a fine mister will help with that. This depends on the thickness of your paint.
This little contraption is what kept me painting. The frustration of learning to paint was one thing, but having to keep mixing and putting paint out made it even worse. So, for people who already paint, or are just learning, this is a nice accessory to have to eliminate some frustration. On top of that, paints get expensive! Having a big glop of premium paint dry out on you is not ideal. Also, trying to remix a specific color over and over throughout a painting is a pain.
If you don't want to make this, there are also options you can purchase if you want. Amazon has some available also.