Wet Palette for £1.50

[Guest]

This wont apply to a lot of you big boys but for the benefit of those who have never heard of a wet pallete, here goes.


Some people use a pallet. In short, you place paint on the pallette and add water to thin it, or other colours to create another colour etc etc, and over a VERY short period of time the paint, starting from the edges, begins to go dry and becomes unusable. You start another blob and suddenly need the toilet. You come back and your blob of paint is, again, unusable. By the time you have finished you have probably used twice as much paint as you actually needed as half of it is dryed up.


One answer is a wet pallette. In short its a sponge with a piece of paper on top. You wet the sponge, the water soaks gently through the paper and you use the paper as a palatte. The paint stays moist but not wet. I have no idea about the sciency bit but its awesome anyway, Its that good that you can put a dollop of paint on the pallette, shut the lid and come back weeks later and its sitting there ready to use. Once the pallette is all full up of paint you just remove the top layer and place a new one on. When it starts to dry up you put more water in. Its recommended that you dont use tap water, but then most of use half serious modellers wouldnt use tap water to thin our paints anyway.


So, where do you get one from?


Well, you could buy this one


[ATTACH]103514.IPB[/ATTACH]



This is currently on offer, reduced from £11.95 to £10.76. Bargain.


or you could make your own. Anyone who knows me will know that I dont simply go out and buy things when I can bodge something together.


You will need


- One container with a snap fitting lid. I bought two from Poundland. Try to get one as shallow as possible as you will be dipping your brush in it.


- Some baking paper..NOT GREASEPROOF PAPER. The paper needs to be porous. I got an 8 meter roll from poundland.


- A sheet of kitchen roll. I stole a sheet from the landlady.


Put it together and you have something like this


[ATTACH]103513.IPB[/ATTACH]



Now, Im going to admit I havent tried it out yet, so I will give you an update later on. But if you search "Wet Pallette" on you tube there are some nice videos on how to use them and how to make them.

[Guest]

Well, Ive just done an unscientific test with the wet pallette


I painted the next colour on a model, put in about enough paint to do the job in hand and found that when I finished I had about 3/4 of the paint left over. I found that I can dab the paper with a tissue paper (toilet roll in my case) to remove the excess paint thus making the paper last longer.


I then went on to the next paint, but only put in a tiny tiny enough, so little that I wouldnt have expected it to do half the job. However, it turned out to be the exact amount.


So, my unscientific test concludes that when using a wet pallette you dont even need to use half as much paint as you would with a dry pallette.


One other point though. I think I put in a tiny too much water. It wasnt soaking, but it was slightly squidgey to the touch. As a result it did thin the paint a little which actually turned out fine as I was doing some shading anyway.


So, conclution two this that you really need to play with this for a while until you learn how to use it properly.


Ive put some paint into the pallette and Ive going to leave it overnight. Ive put in a really thick blob and pulled it so that the edges are thin. Ill see what its like in the morning.

[Guest]

Great idea, I don't use water based paints on my models (enamels all the way) but I like to paint (as in pictures) I can see this being a real boon thanks.

[Ian M]

Hmm nice one Penny I might have to try that next time I have some figures to paint.


Look forward to reading how you got on with it.

[Guest]

Well, its been nearly 12 hours and Ive gone to the pallette


The first thing I noticed was a slight bit of condensation on the inside lid of the box. I opened it up and the paint inside still looked fine. I got my brush and had a little feel of it. On the whole its thickened up a little, but certainly not dried out. All you would need to do is add a little bit of water to it and its fine again.


My conclution of the home made wet pallette


- It will require a little bit of adjusting and getting used to


- it WILL save you anything up to 75% of your paint usage simply by reducing wastage


- It will easily store your paint overnight or longer if you need to stop painting for any reason


- There may be better products on the market, but at £1.50 this WILL pay for itself.


Now, here is an idea.


If you moisened it with enamal thinners instead of water do you think it work equally well for enamel paints? Im afraid that I dont use enamel paints so I dont have the opportunity to find out, but given that the boxes are 2 for a pound from poundland and the baking paper comes in an 8 meter roll, perhaps someone would like to give it a try? What have you got to lose? 51 pence?

[Guest]

I used to use a Rowney kit like this, or similar. It consisted of a plastic tray, some blotting paper and a sheet of what Rowney called "special paper" which did look suspiciously like baking sheet! But the instructions persuaded me that the "special" paper allowed moisture to keep the acrylic usable through Osmosis! Now, I'm thinking maybe all baking paper works like this!!! Will give it a try, cos the Rowney one worked really, really well.

[john i am]

I believe but I may be wrong and will stand corrected if I am that parchment paper(special paper) should be used in the making of a wet palette.I acquired mine from a cake making shop and it works a treat in my homemade palette paint stays usable for days and days.I only ever really use my palette when painting 1/35 figures and above which is great as it keeps all the mixed colours and tones usable.I do have sponges in mine as I find these retain the water nicely and keeps the paper nice and moist without saturation

[dave]

Various sources I have seen on this recommend "Greaseproof paper" or "baking parchment", although some of the expensive baking parchments are siliconised which would cause a problem with water penetration. I think this is a case where a cheap product may be the better.

[Guest]

Various sources I have seen on this recommend "Greaseproof paper" or "baking parchment", although some of the expensive baking parchments are siliconised which would cause a problem with water penetration. I think this is a case where a cheap product may be the better.

The source I read said it MUST be Baking Parchment and NOT Greaseproof paper. This is because the lining, as you say, stops the water from seeping through.


Yes, cheap is probably better in this case.


BTW - Still using it and still loving it.

[Guest]

a stupid question but what type of water do you use if you don't use tap water please ?

[Guest]

a stupid question but what type of water do you use if you don't use tap water please ?

Well, because Im using CItadel paints, I use filtered water, but I personally would advise using whatever you normally thin your paints with.

[Guest]

i will start using the water filter that we have then thanks penny i love this hobby always learning new tips and tricks

[Guest]

just watched a youtube video and i'm going to get the bits to make one in the next couple of days thanks for the incentive