Palette Discipline

You should be in charge of your palette at all times, not the palette running away with you. Very often the colours on the palette become muddy and mixed up and you can't find what you want when you want it. I mix my colours on a large piece of clear glass placed over a sheet of white paper. This makes it easier to clean the palette and I can see the colours clearly against the white.

There are some very simple rules you should follow to keep things going smoothly and efficiently when using oil paints. Acrylics tend to dry out too quickly if you put them out too soon before you need them.

1	Set out the colours logically. Always put two blobs of white out, one for mixing and one for keeping clean for highlights, etc. Put earth colours on one part, blues on another, reds on another and yellows on yet another.
2	Use a palette knife to mix making sure that when it has touched a colour you clean it before it touches another. This way the colours remain clean and when you want just a dab of yellow, for instance, it is just yellow that you pick up, not yellow with a streak of red or blue in it which will muck up the bit of painting you are doing.
3	Try mixing one or two colours that you will need a lot of. This saves a lot time and gives you entrée to the picture, i.e. you will have a head start by being prepared.
4	When painting an area with lots of shadows or changes of tone, mix the mid colour and keep lighter tones and darker ones close by so that they form a little area on the palette for themselves. This way you can drag the lighter and darker tones towards each other as needed. When you have finished using them, scrape them up individually and put them on another part of the palette for later. You will find this saves you a lot of time and effort as you will not need to mix them all over again.
5	Keep the mixing area of the palette reasonably clean.
6	Clean your brushes frequently so that colours don't get polluted. When painting an area that requires many changes of colour use several brushes at once. This saves time and keeps the flow going better.
7	When you become more proficient and confident you can just set out the actual colours you need rather than putting out all the blues, yellows, reds, etc. You can begin to 'read' the subject matter in terms of how you might mix the colours needed and only put those onto the palette. This is a much more satisfying way to paint as it is efficient and more disciplined. You will probably find that at this stage the results of your efforts are more successful.

You can clean off the palette even when the colours are quite dried on using a window scraper with a stanley blade or other make of steel blade. When you have got the worst off you can wipe the glass over with white spirit. If you are using acrylics the job is even easier as the paint will scrape off easily when dried or wipe off easily, if wet.