How to Make a Paint Pallet
A paint pallet is a flat surface used to mix paints when creating a painting. The paints that artists usually array on a pallet are oils or acrylics. Typically, you paint with your dominant hand and hold the pallet in your other hand so that it is readily accessed when you need to mix or get more paint onto your brush. You do not need to buy a paint pallet from the art store because many household items make great pallets. Items such as Styrofoam plates or jar lids work, and some artists even use blank canvasses as pallets, finding inspiration for a future painting in the random color splashes.
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Things You'll Need
- Styrofoam dinner plate or other flat, disposable or washable item of your choosing
- Tubes of oil or acrylic paint in hues of all the colors on the spectrum
- Pallet knife
Instructions
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1
Arrange your paints on a table in order from warmest to coolest, so that they follow the color spectrum. Red is the warmest, followed by orange, yellow, green, blue and indigo, and violet is the coolest. Place any white, gray or black shades at the end, after violet.
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2
Hold your pallet as you intend to do when you are painting. Squirt approximately 1/2 teaspoon of paint onto the far end of the pallet, near the edge, beginning with the warmest hue of red.
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3
Squirt the next-warmest color onto the pallet, next to and counterclockwise from the first dollop of paint. When you have added all of your reds to the pallet, continue with the warmest hue of orange and proceed until you have placed paint from all of your tubes onto the pallet. The pallet should have no paint in the middle -- this space is for mixing paints together to create new hues.
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Spread colors out or separate a small amount of paint from the rest using the pallet knife. You can also use a paintbrush to mix paints in the middle of the pallet.
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Tips & Warnings
Place a small amount of white paint on the pallet wherever you'd like to make a buffer between two adjacent hues to make sure they do not mix accidentally. For example, you could make a buffer between the reds and the oranges, the oranges and the yellows, and so on. Or you could make a buffer between the warm and cool colors.
There are no rules about how to organize your pallet. While many painters find it useful to follow the color spectrum, you should experiment and figure out what organizational pattern works best for you. It may even vary from painting to painting.
When you have completed your painting and it is time to wash the pallet (if you do not plan to simply dispose of it), the pallet knife can be useful for scraping paint off the pallet.
Some oil paints are toxic, such as some cadmium reds, so be careful not to ingest any of these paints, or get too much on your skin. Also, keep these paints away from children and pets. The bottle will usually tell you if that particular paint is toxic.
References
- Photo Credit Stockbyte/Stockbyte/Getty Images
