Artists Palette for oil painting, types and description

Palettes for Oil painting.

Wooden studio palettes are traditionally made of Mahogany in a kidneyshape with thumb hole and finger grip, held along the forearm between elbow and wrist. (New wooden palettes need to be oiled well with linseed oil to prepare them for use).

There are many shapes of palette on the market today and available in a variety of materials other than wood - clear and white acrylic, glass, porcelain, plastic and tear-off. One thing they need to be is non-absorbent and preferably easy to clean.

A large palette is not a necessity, but certainly a pleasure when it comes to mixing paint. Any palette after all, is your 'thinking ground', a place where you mix colours, judge their properties, make decisions.

The type of palette is very much a personal choice, a large palette is very useful if you are standing at an easel, not so vital if you prefer to be seated or of course you can make your own or adapt any suitable surface.

When laying the colours out on your palette, it's a good idea to lay them out in some sort of logical order, from light to dark, or in colour families. It's also a good idea to put them close to the outside top edge, this leaves plenty of working/mixing area in the centre.
Laying them out the same each time is good practice, you don't have to stop and search for the colour and it helps to prevent those little accidents - like picking up the wrong colour!

Cleaning the palette. Some people don't bother to clean the palette, leaving dried paint in hard ridged masses, adding new paint as required. Others clean the palette after each painting session, it's all a matter of personal choice and how you prefer to work.

If you have dried paint on the palette which you want to remove, scrape off what you can with a palette knife, smear a small amount of Zest-it brush cleaner over the dried paint, take 5 or have a cup of tea. During this time the Zest-it will have softened the dried paint making it much easier to remove with the knife. Wipe down between each application. Repeat as necessary, drying it off finally with kitchen towel or the like.

Note: If you use the above process on a wooden palette that has not yet formed a protective patina, then it's as well to rub it over with kitchen towel dipped in Linseed oil after cleaning, this will help to protect the wood and build up the paint mixing surface.

Some artists clean the paint off the mixing area as they work, others leave the paint on until the painting is finished, again it's personal choice, whatever suits you best.
Palette selection courtesy of Daler Rowney