Hi, all.
Here is a proposed trick, extremly usefull to whoever use water based paints
(i.e. Vallejo/PA Acrylics) for paint brushing and weathering.
Probably, most of you know about it, but in case (at least for beginners) here
it is.
Here we go :
One of the characteristics of acryllics is that they dry really fast, unhappilly,
not only on your model
. I mean, it will dry as fast on your palette, wasting
paint and time consuming exact colour mixes.
The solution here is the wet-palette. This is a trick I learned from miniature painting .
With this inexpensive trick your paint will remain usable on your palette for hours,
sometime even days...
(not kidding)
Here is my (awfull but efficient) implementation of the beast :
Here is how to build it :
To build your wet-palette you need :
* a standard sponge.
* a box, just a little bit bigger than your sponge, that can safely be filled with water
* Expandable parchment palette paper - this can be found in any art store and is primarilly
targeted for artists oil painting. 50 tear off of 29x20cm costs about 9 Euros. I use Winsor&Newton ones,
bought my actual set more than 4 years ago and still have about 30 of theim ready for use (some having
been used for oil work, so you can see it is cheap stuff).
And here is the way of doing it :
1. Fill your sponge with water, put it in the box. The sponge realy need to be full of water.
2. Complete the level of water in the box to arrive between the middle and the top of the contained
sponge. The water should not exceed the top of the sponge.
3. Cut a piece of Expandable Parchment sheet of about the size of the top of your sponge.
4. Go in your bathroom, put your Parchment fragment in your wash hand bassin and flow a good and
strong hot water stream on one side of the sheet, then on the second size during about 20 secondes.
5. Once it have been really well wetted, go back at your desk and put the Parchment fragment you
prepared on the top of the wet sponge.
Your wet palette is ready.
So now ?
Just put a drop of paint on the top of the wet parchment : It will remains usable for quite as
long as your sponge will deliver humidity to your parchment.
It means, for as long as your waterproof box is still filled with water at least half the height
of your sponge. Obviously if you put your wet palette close under a strong light bubble, it will dry
somewhat faster, but should let your paint usable at least for some hours...
If the parchment starts to dry, or dried as the water evaporated because of several days to air exposure,
just repeat previous steps 1 to 5, with exception of step 3 : You can obviously reuse your
previous-but-actually-dried parchment paper, no need to trash it yet, just rewet it a bit...
Lastly, when you will have used your parchment piece a lot and it will be full of old paint, just put it
under an hot water stream again and clean it with your fingers : each side is reusable/cleanable a huge
number of times, thus being really economical by itself in addition of the savings done on no more wasted
paints because of too fast drying on your palette.
Add the comfort of using an acryllic mix for hours, and you will understand why (IMHO) this trick is really
a usefull one (in case you were not yet aware of it).
Having a closable sponge-wet-palette-box is even better.
As a revenge to my wife having expulsed my Marshall amp from our dining room, I plan to hijack one of her
pretty little tupperware box one day, but well... not easy and risky stuff here : I guess she counts any
of theim since the day I said "hmmm... this is cool... interesting..." while opening and closing several
times a sweet little semi transparent orange box. She looked at me with a suspicious eye saying "what do
you think about ??? ", then "...whatever, forget it !!!" and she quickly took back the sweet little
waterproof orange thing.
Life is sooooo hard you know...
... well, anyway, I hope this little trick, unexpensive and quickly setted up will be as usefull for
you as it is for me...
Bruno Gillet.
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