My Style of Painting Palette Control (or not)

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.

If I recall correctly, the colours were (1) Mixed grey from orange/blue. (2) Cerulean blue (3) Transluscent orange PO71, a new colour I’m using (4) Cadmium yellow (5) Cadmium orange (6) Prussian blue (7) More Prussian blue (8) Titanium white on the brush which gave me (9).
wip palette colors
Painting-in-progress. This was end of Day One, where I left it to dry overnight. Orange and magenta were used as the “get rid of the canvas white” colours.
Detail wip painting
There’s texture paste on the canvas too.

2 Replies to “My Style of Painting Palette Control (or not)”

  1. 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.

    1. 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!!

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