Know those photos you get of artists’ palettes with squeezes of colour around the dge and a mixing area in the middle? Mine never looks like that.
I don’t use a staywet palette for acrylics, and I don’t like to waste paint, so I have evolved a working method that involves a lot of opening of tubes or tubs of paint, taking out a little, using that, then repeating. It may seem inefficient, but it also has the benefit of making me step back from my painting regularly.
The tubs/tubes live on the shelf below my palette so they’re easily to hand and, yes, I do put them back in the same spot. I’d call it a taboret but it’s really a slimline wire kitchen trolley the in-house art critic found, and before that it was an old computer desk, and before that a TV trolley that was a bit low.
This photo shows the squence of colours as I was working on a seascape. I don’t clean the palette, just add the new colour and mix.




Yes, I like your way of painting….now I feel better about the way I do my paintings…though the paint critics here in the South Cape is rather very , very old school and realistically orientated; my paintings never get a higher score than 60%…but I ignore their ignorance , as long as I enjoy my art.
It’s hard being in an art group with a preference for another style of art and not open to other things! If you’re enjoying it, then you’re doing it right!!