OK, by request, I have decided to put together a little bit of a tutorial covering tips on the use, care, and upkeep of the wet palette.
First a general note. If you don't have one of these, you really should get one. I'm going to be talking particularly about the Masterson Handy Palette, as shown here:
http://www.dickblick.com/products/maste ... y-palette/However, that said, these notes should work for pretty much any commercially available wet palette on the market. You can also make your own, using tupperware and the like, but honestly, for as cheap as these things are, and for how much use you get out them, I feel like it's worth the investment to do it right. But your mileage may vary, and again, these tips should carry over pretty well.
OK, so the first tip, assuming you did buy one of these, is to take the paper that comes with your wet palette, and throw it away. Buy "Parchment Paper" readily available at any supermarket, less than $3 for a roll that will last you a LONG time.
I also bought a replacement pack of sponges, after my first one tore while I was cleaning it once. (More on that below). They last a long time, I've had my palette for 5 years, and I'm still on my 2nd sponge, so again, for the time you get out of these, I feel like it's worth the investment. This picture shows the replacement sponges, the Parchment paper, the scissors I use to cut it down to size, and of course, the palette itself.
Now, get your sponge good and soaking wet, I recommend using cold water. Warm water serves no purpose except to encourage mold. Mold likes moist, warm, and dark. Guess what your wet palette sponge is like when you are not using it?
The parchment paper comes in rolls, meaning that it's got a natural curve when you pull it out. Here's a tip for flattening it out:
I cut my parchment in advance and let it sit under a book for days. Honestly, I don't know how much difference it makes, but what the heck.
You're probably wondering why I posted a picture of my painting table. Well, you'll notice the palette on the left, but the other thing I want you to notice is 3 little water cups. The one on the left is for washing metallic paints off your brush, the one on the right is for non-metallics. The one with the dropper in it is for the palette. Here ya go:
The dropper came with baby medicine. I have 3 or 4 of them. I'm sure you can find the same kind of thing cheap elsewhere.
OK time to paint right? You get your parchment paper cut to size, you put it on your wet palette, it's all ready to go, and then this happens:
I found this extremely frustrating when I started using these things. That's why I started doing the thing where I flattened it out under a book. It didn't do anything for this. So what DO you do? Well, what I do is let it roll like this once, then flip it over and put it on the palette again. It will roll again, but more slowly. Then, what you do is pick it up, and fold the corners under, like this:
Do that on all four corners, and your paper SHOULD sit flat on the sponge.
Another method is to hold all four corners down with your fingers for at least 30 seconds. By that time, it should be held down well enough that it won't curl.
Yay, FINALLY ready to paint!
So here ya go, take a big old brush (not one of your good detail brushes), and pat some paint down on your palette. The paint pictured is my favorite color, P3's "Sanguine Base".
Then you need to add a bit of water to the paint to thin it a bit. I tried to time the photo for the drop actually coming out. Yeah, a bit late. It was a nice try.
Then paint as you normally would.
Now, it's time to apply the shadow to your Sanguine Base. If you're done using the Sanguine Base, you can add the shadow color right to what's left there. If not, you can make a new spot, and leave the original color there. In this case, I'm adding some Vallejo Game Color "Night Blue".
Now, whether you add more water or not here depends on several factors - are you adding a lot of the shadow color to the original? Is it already watered down enough? In this case, I felt it didn't need more water added, so I mixed up what was there and applied my shadow to my mini.
Shadow ready to apply, good to go.
Now, the next question - how long will paint stay good on the palette? If you leave the top off, it should stay wet for at least 2-3 hours, depending on how wet your sponge was when you started. That's still WAY longer than it would stay wet and usable on a dry palette. But if you close the lid securely, it should stay usable for over a week. Very useful for making sure your paint mixes stay uniform over a large unit of troops.
However, if you leave paint on the palette too long, some paints will start to separate into their composite colors. SOMETIMES you can save that just by mixing it back together with a brush, and maybe a drop of water if you need it. Other times, you just can't, in which case you'll need to make the color again.
The other thing that can happen if you leave paints on too long, especially dark paints, you'll discover that the physics that keep your paint wet through the paper apparently works both ways:
You might not care about this, but if you're OCD like I am, I won't paint on that. It also goes back to what I was talking about earlier about the mold. I can't tell if my sponge is moldy if I have some paint seepage coming through like this. And I'm REALLY not going to paint on that! (I'm allergic to mold too)
So, cleaning your sponge with hot water and a wringing it out gently should get rid of this discoloration. If I do think that there might be some mold involved too, I'll spray it with some Lysol spray as well. I haven't seen any adverse effects from doing so. Another way to do this is to put a single drop of anti-bacterial dish soap right on the sponge, fill it with water, and then let most of the water out. The soap will permeate the sponge and will help keep the mold from growing there.
That's all I can think of. If anybody has more questions, or would like something else demonstrated, let me know, and I'll answer as best I can. I'm certainly no expert on painting, but I have been using one of these for about 5 years, so if anybody else can benefit from that experience, I'm happy to help.
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