Tutorial: Wet Palette

In the pursuit of improving my painting and increasing my productivity, I've been experimenting with a wet palette. I did some research online, from making my own to buying a professional one.


The results of the research was to spend the money for either the Privateer Press version or a professional artist's wet palette. The professional artist version is a bit larger than the Privateer Press version at about the same price from online stores. The rationale for a prepared one is that it is designed for it, relatively inexpensive, and you can spend more time painting. I decided to invest in one, but Game Kastle would need a week before it would arrive. Since that defeated the concept of painting more, I dived into making a wet palette.

Why a wet palette? It's used to keep your acrylic paints wet since they dry quickly. In the past, I used a ceramic tile for mixing and keeping the paint wet, but the tile would dry the paint quickly. Some of my Citadel Foundation and brown paints would dry and make painting batches of models a long time as I worked to keep them wet. Experimenting with the wet palette, I effectively reduced my paint time for a 28mm model for each color in half. This has helped inspire me to work on my miniatures.

To make my wet palette, I dug up a plastic container that has a top that will seal the container. This is important because it will help keep the moisture in the container and the leftover paint wet. In experimenting, I've kept Citadel Bestial Brown wet for 2 weeks between uses.

Next, find a simple an cheap sponge. In my case, it's a sponge with a scrubbing pad. It's important to have the sponge and not the scrubbing pad, so tear or cut off the scrubbing pad. Soak the sponge with water, ideally with distiller water keep the bacteria build up to a minimum. I used filtered water so I'll need to clean the sponge in a month. After the water is filled above the sponge and it's soaked, poor the excess water out of the container.

For the palette itself, I used baking parchment paper. It's porous enough to let the moisture pass through, buy stays dry enough to keep your paint on it and to mix colors. Cut a piece to the size of the sponge and container so that the parchment is touching the sponge. Soak the parchment on both sides to keep it from curling on the corners. Once you are done, you are ready to start painting.