Wet Painting Palette

Hello painters friends !

Never get bored by your acrylic paint drying on your palette before you can use it all ? If no, this instructable is not for you ;)

If, you are, like I am, living in a hot summer place, this quick, cheap and easy accessory should help a lot keeping your paint to dry too fast.

Wet palette principle is to put your paint on a porous surface with a water reserve underneath letting water slowly be absorbed by the paint at the surface slowing its drying.

As my DIY philosophy is "Maximum reuse, minimum price", this instructable should not cost you much. You'll need the following :

Material :

• cooking paper (I think it's called "wax paper" in US and "greaseproof paper" in UK)
• flat (5mm thin) sponge. You can find them in any grocery store for less than 2€ for five sheets. You'll use half one for the palette.
• a flat box approximatively 2cm high. Mine is approximatively 12cm x 7cm. It's the cover of "Ferrerro rocher" box.

Tools :

• You'll only need scissors

You'll need two layers of sponge for your wet palette. Just use the scissors to cut first layer the shape of the container you have chosen.

Cut second layer to fit the container.

Then cut a piece of cooking paper that'll be twice the width of the second layer of sponge and with length a little bit smaller than this layer (paper length = sponge length -1cm). This will ease palette filling.

Put sponge layer over paper then fold paper around sponge.

Put paper and sponge over the first layer.

To fill the palette, let a small water trickle flow over the visible part of sponge. You see on first picture than paper is starting to stick on sponge due to capillarity.

When all paper is stuck on sponge and your container is well filled, you can use the palette putting your paint on the paper.

• If you need to stop your work for a long time (lunch, night, ..) you can put your palette with wet paint on it to the fridge. It'll help keeping the paint wet.
• when you mix your paint on the palette, don't rub too hard :you should rip the paper letting an incontrollable amount of water raising in your paint.
• When paper is full of dry paint on a face just turn it upside down and use other face.
• If possible, don't let your palette without water for too long. If you don't need it for a long time, remove paper to avoid sponge deterioration (see picture).

Have a good (and long) paint job !