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So, despite having started painting models a lot between 1990 and 1995, and fairly often between 2008-2014, I made myself a wet palette out of a plastic food container lid, a kitchen towel and some baking paper yesterday.

I swear, it has made the single biggest difference to my painting of anything I have ever done. Why have I never done it before?!

What else are the obvious things I should be doing?

 Fifty wrote:
So, despite having started painting models a lot between 1990 and 1995, and fairly often between 2008-2014, I made myself a wet palette out of a plastic food container lid, a kitchen towel and some baking paper yesterday.

I swear, it has made the single biggest difference to my painting of anything I have ever done. Why have I never done it before?!

What else are the obvious things I should be doing?

I agree with you, I started doing that last winter and it has made a good difference in my painting.

I recently watched this video and it looks like you've had the exact same revelation as Atom Smasher.

I've never used one and haven't painted for years, but if/when I finally give it another go I'm certainly going to go in armed with a wet palette.

I agree entirely, a wet palette is just about the best painting innovation since a caveman decided to smear some mashed berries on a wall! They're just amazing for mixing/blending and getting smooth, thin coats.

What a revelation a wet palette is. Of course , the second best thing about a wet palette is the tasty Thai dinner you have to eat to get the container.

Airbrush, even if for just priming

averykess wrote:
Airbrush, even if for just priming

I agree its a great tool.


Varnishing is one of those things i find indispensable.
Coating between layers after a long amount work lets me basically save progress so that if i mess up, i can use a Q-tip and alcohol and remove the mistake fairly quickly without it staining the previous layers.

How much is an airbrush that is good enough to get base undercoats done? And do you need to use it outdoors? I have nowhere with good ventilation.

Open a window and a door should be good enough.

IF you are concerned a dust mask is fine too.

Its useful for priming (there are airbrush primers) and base coating at the minimum. you can get into crazy details and stuff with time and practice though.

Why is wet pallette so great? Truley ignorant, not being snarky. The glossary description says it stops the paint drying fast and helps with blending. Anything else?

Gwaihirsbrother wrote:
Why is wet pallette so great? Truley ignorant, not being snarky. The glossary description says it stops the paint drying fast and helps with blending. Anything else?

Just for the stopping the paint from drying fast is the big bonus. I can keep paints in my wet palette for a week without them drying. It makes it nice for when I need a little bit of paint and it not have to worry about it drying. It also does help with blending because you can blend thinner layers, which lets you utilize more of your paint instead of having it dry and not be as useful.

Wet palettes afford you consistency. Consistent consistency, that is. Basically, you can keep your paint exactly as you mix it, instead of having to constantly adjust with water to combat evaporation. This lets you really dial in your flow, opacity, etc. for the task at hand. Being able to keep paint for days is great, but the real boon is being able to keep paint thinned exactly as you want it for more than a minute.

Wet palette is amazing yeah ; )
Airbrush and good airbrush care
Good brushes and good brush care
A good light is very important
Something to hold models with - corks, paint tubs, or my favourite: a toothpick holder which lets you rotate the model with your thumb while keeping it steady.
Having all the mediums, varnishes, cleaners and what not.

Making a wet palette is pretty easy as above, my favourite method is;

Citadel static grass tufts box
Anti-bacterial kitchen sponge
P3 wet palette refills (like $5 for 50)

You do need to trim the refills to the right size, but it is really only 10mm too wide. The lid keeps the air in the box really, really low, there is maybe 5mm clearance from the lid to the paint surface.

I don't think I have ever been so excited about 3 random items lining up so closely before, and I am not sure how I feel about it

For a wet palette, I have found that a ceramic tile works really well.

I would recommend looking into glaze-medium and retarder.

Retarder is useful for tinning paint and keeping it wet without making it 'washy'. Its most obvious application is wet blending, but it can do so much more...

Most people understand that a small amount of paint will dry faster than a large blob (it has something to do with surface area). This causes problems with fine detail brushes, because they only carry a small amount of paint. It only take a few seconds for the paint to begin drying on the brush-tip, meaning it won't flow and becomes difficult to work with. You may have experienced this while trying to dot eyes: the first eye turns out okay (to your amazement), but the paint just won't seem to take on the second eye. People try to compensate by pressing harder, and then... "Aww crap!" you end up with paint all over his eyelids.

Retarder really helps keep the paint flowing when using fine detail brushes. I think you would be amazed at the kind of fine work that becomes possible. With a bit of practice you can paint neat lines that are razor thin.

I wouldn't say I've 'fully' explored all the possibilities with glaze medium yet, but I would already call it an 'essential'. I find it especially useful when highlighting and shading, because it allows me paint crudely bright and unrealistic highlights, and then glaze over them with mid-tones until they match perfectly, appearing subtle and refined.

Those are my two tips

 GamesEtc wrote:
For a wet palette, I have found that a ceramic tile works really well.

Um... that's just a palette. The "wet" in what we're all talking about comes from the fact that the palette surface is semi-permeable and sits over a reservoir of water. For the DIYers, this usually means parchment paper (silicone-impregnated baking paper, not vellum) over a wet sponge. The slow (necessary to have any degree of control over the consistency of the paint) migration of moisture up from the reservoir replaces much of what is lost due to evaporation, thus maintaining paint's consistency during work. If assembled inside a resealable container, as they generally are, this also extends dispensed paint's viability between sessions, even ones days apart.

For a normal palette, though, ceramic tiles are a popular option and for good reason. They're smooth, cheap, easy to source, resistant to solvents (and therefore nearly infinitely reusable, barring a major accident), and a convenient size. Unless you need wells for mixing large quantities of highly dilute paint/washes, I don't see any reason to use anything else... except for a wet palette!

 Smacks wrote:
I would recommend looking into glaze-medium and retarder.

Retarder is useful for tinning paint and keeping it wet without making it 'washy'. Its most obvious application is wet blending, but it can do so much more...

Most people understand that a small amount of paint will dry faster than a large blob (it has something to do with surface area). This causes problems with fine detail brushes, because they only carry a small amount of paint. It only take a few seconds for the paint to begin drying on the brush-tip, meaning it won't flow and becomes difficult to work with. You may have experienced this while trying to dot eyes: the first eye turns out okay (to your amazement), but the paint just won't seem to take on the second eye. People try to compensate by pressing harder, and then... "Aww crap!" you end up with paint all over his eyelids.

Retarder really helps keep the paint flowing when using fine detail brushes. I think you would be amazed at the kind of fine work that becomes possible. With a bit of practice you can paint neat lines that are razor thin.

I wouldn't say I've 'fully' explored all the possibilities with glaze medium yet, but I would already call it an 'essential'. I find it especially useful when highlighting and shading, because it allows me paint crudely bright and unrealistic highlights, and then glaze over them with mid-tones until they match perfectly, appearing subtle and refined.

Those are my two tips

I couldn't agree more. I like Wet Pallettes but, found just using Liqutex Matte Medium on drop per mix works wonders. With Vallejo choice paints, I use the dropper and a small paint palllete. No need for a wet palette.

averykess wrote:
Airbrush, even if for just priming

I have an airbrush, but it's such a hassle having to clean it so thoroughly in between each colour and after each session.

Between each colour?
I usually just run a good amount of water through it until it comes out clean. Thats enough for switching colours... Between sessions?
Sure, that warants a good cleaning, which is why I "rack up" stuff do prime/varnish/basecoat.

Gwaihirsbrother wrote:
Why is wet pallette so great? Truley ignorant, not being snarky. The glossary description says it stops the paint drying fast and helps with blending. Anything else?

It is pretty much that. It keeps paint thin while you work (very useful when it's hot and things dry out fast) and if you decide to take a break, even for as much as a day, your paint you've mixed will still be there, waiting for you to continue.

The other bonus, I find, is that when painting from pots or dropper bottles, it's easy to get far more paint on your brush than you need; a wet palette alleviates this as you get very thin paints on a flat surface and it's actually hard to pick up more than you need. This helps keep highlights and shades natural rather than allowing them to build up thickly.

From the looks of this thread, I need to check out some glaze mediums.

Wet Pallette, cheap spraygun for primers, but use black, grey, and white primer on the same model. firstly prime in black from underneath, going higher up the 'back' of the model than the 'front'. Then grey from just above the centreline but following the same sort of pattern so it is highlighting the black and becoming basecoat everywhere else, then finishing off with the white from above and in 'front' only. ('front' being where you want the most light, 'rear' being where there will be most shadow.)

This pre-shades the model and will show through when using a wet pallette and properly thinned paint, thus helping you visualise where the highlights and shadows should be.

And if you have a spraygun, do yourself a colour card. Get a sheet of plasticard, mask it off into three 'lanes'. I did mine portait and had the lanes running vertically. Prime lane 1 in Black, 2 in Grey, and 3 in White. Then divide it into as many stripes at 90° as you have different colours, lightly spray them over the top. You can then go one step further if you want and divide each 'lane' into 3 in the same direction as the original lane and spray with Gloss, Satin, and Matt varnish.

You will now have a colour card which should tell you exactly what shade you will get dependant on the colour of your primer, the colour you use, and the varnish that goes over it. The lighter the colour, and of course the lighter the coat of colour, the bigger the difference when over the white primer, but there will also be a difference over the grey and black primers too.

Another good trick is zenithal priming.
For rattlecans, you'll need black, grey and white.

Spray the model black.

Then give it a spritz with grey from just below the horizontal level right the way to vertical from above.

Then give it a light spritz from above with white.

Instant highlight guide for where to put highlights to get a nice look.

With an airbrush you can get a smoother result by using multiple mixes, then simply glaze colours over the top. For more saturated colours you can glaze complimentary shades and highlights as well. Very fast technique.

For me, I found that thinning my paints with airbrush medium has really been a huge step forward for me. I started getting MUCH smoother coats of paint and I quickly moved toward using a lot more transparent colors to help my color transitions.

You can get the same effect by thinning regular acrylic medium and using that (which I know a lot of people do) but the airbrush medium is already thin enough to act as a thinner for your paints. Anything that removes extra steps is good.

I started using a wet palette this year and I love it. I painted for about 15 years then had a long break. started again last year. I never knew such a thing existed :(
I made mine out of a Citadel grass tufts plastic box, its made such a difference.

i have been racking my brain trying to think of a way to incorporate a "standard" palette and a wet palette... I love the wells of standards but the paint dries too quick. I love the consistency and ability to take a couple days off the wet palette gives me, but I like my paints a bit thinner so i have trouble with them either spreading all over the paper or just running through relatively quickly into the sponge... Any ideas?

Cambonimachine wrote:
i have been racking my brain trying to think of a way to incorporate a "standard" palette and a wet palette... I love the wells of standards but the paint dries too quick. I love the consistency and ability to take a couple days off the wet palette gives me, but I like my paints a bit thinner so i have trouble with them either spreading all over the paper or just running through relatively quickly into the sponge... Any ideas?

Egg crate foam for the sponge substrate?

Hmmm maybe... you think the foam would moisturize the paint as well as a sponge?

kb_lock wrote:
Making a wet palette is pretty easy as above, my favourite method is;

Citadel static grass tufts box
Anti-bacterial kitchen sponge
P3 wet palette refills (like $5 for 50)

You do need to trim the refills to the right size, but it is really only 10mm too wide. The lid keeps the air in the box really, really low, there is maybe 5mm clearance from the lid to the paint surface.

I don't think I have ever been so excited about 3 random items lining up so closely before, and I am not sure how I feel about it

While convenient there is a cheaper version. For $3-5 total at the dollar store you can buy a Tupperware knock off with sealing lid, a kitchen sponge (or paper towel works in a pinch) and a roll of parchment paper. Cut paper to fit container, wet sponge or paper towel and place cut parchment paper on top, voila!