A palette
is the surface upon which you mix your paints to achieve the desired
hue and tone.It can be made of wood veneer such as Luan,masonite,
glass, plastic, plexiglass or can even be wax paper sheets. The palettes
included in a paint box are usually masonite and as such are pretty
useless other than as rigid backings for wax paper sheets which are
often clipped to them. An important notion to consider is that the
palette should be a neutral color so as not to distract from the required
tone of the mixture.Paper palettes are usually a bright glossy white
and unfinished verneers or masonite will stain and not clean off very
well.Paper is naturally convenient as it can be easily discarded but
throwing away excess paint that is on the palette is wastefull and
expensive.One solution is to use a paint box with shelves in the lid
to store left over paint. Another solution is to use the John
Pike watercolor palette to be used with oils. The plastic palette
has a lid which can be closed and the entire box placed in the freezer
to minimize the drying of the paint.Thin plywood and veneers have
traditionally been used as palettes,although they need to be treated
first before use. In order to make them impervious to staining and
easy to clean, they must first be coated with succesive coats of a
drying oil or resin varnish and then allowed to dry in the sun. Polyurethane
can also be applied in succesive coats to achieve the desired degree
of a hard shell-like coating.Although meany palettes are designed
to be held in the free hand as evidenced by their organic shapes,a
rectangilar palette that fits in the top of a paint bow does very
nicely. In fact the best palette is probably a rectangular piece of
3/8" glass coated on the back with neutral grey(primer) spray
enamel. As such glass can be perfectly cleaned with a razor blade
in a scraper without using any solvents.
