Easy, Inexpensive Artist’s Palette for Acrylic Painting

One of the most important aspects of acrylic portrait painting is setting up your palette.

It’s often overlooked, but having a palette setup that works well for you can minimize frustration, increase productivity, reduce paint costs, and even enhance accuracy in your portrait.

Recently, an artist asked me how I set up my palette. Of course, there’s many ways to do it.

I’m not going to say the way I do it is the right way, but it works for me. And it may work for you as well.

I use a traditional wood palette–about 14″ wide and 18″ long. I customized it a bit by adding a lip to the edge. That keeps my matte medium from dripping off the side. The lip is thick chipboard about 2″ in width that I bent and glued onto the wood. Then I sealed it with gloss medium to keep the moisture from warping it.

Before I start a new painting, I put aluminum foil over the entire surface, and attach it securely to back of the palette with clear packaging tape. It holds very well.

Then I lay out my paints.

I keep them wet as I can with a spray bottle of water while I work, spraying them about every 15 minutes or so.

When my mixing area gets too full of paint, I add a fresh piece of aluminum foil over the area, folding it over slightly to conform to the rounded shape of the palette. The previous layer of wet paint holds it down. This way I am not wasting paint. All my main colors on the palette remain until my painting is done or they dry up.

I throw the discarded, soiled pieces of aluminum foil away in a bag and then I get paid for them when I recycle them with my aluminum cans. And it doesn’t pollute the environment either!

Here is a video where I explain further how to set this palette up…