Why You Should Always Start with a Fresh Palette

When you begin a new oil painting session and are using oils or water soluable oils, set yourself up for success by starting with a fresh palette.

What do I mean by Fresh Palette?
Begin with a clean palette and NEW paint.

Why? Imagine this...

When you are 'In the Flow' of painting, you are at your most creative. You are open and creatively observing your subject. Your progression from subject, to palette, to canvas should move freely in order to maintain your momentum. You are in what I call a 'Seeing' mode.

You clearly know your next move. You have made a decision as to the next color and value, where you want to place it on your painting. You can feel with all your being, the right strokes you intend your brush to make. You're excited and anticipating the perfect effect.

You are holding all of this in a charged hyper focus. You reach to your palette and dip into paint – and it's dry and/or sticky or .... gone. Gone as in: you didn't mix enough paint at the beginning of your session - or perhaps you didn't mix it at all.

SLAM! You've brought all your flowing creative juices to a screeching halt.

You start searching to find the paint that is moist - failing that, you dig in your paint box seeking appropriate tube or tubes, look for a clear area to place more on your palette, scan your work area for your palette knife to mix.... uh.... what was it you were going to do?

Sound familiar?

By this time you have forgotten your initial inspiration.

What are you afraid of wasting?
Are you afraid of wasting your precious, expensive, investment of paint?

Because what you're actually wasting is 

your precious time,

patience, creativity and growth.

Which is harder to come by?

Which has more value?

SOLUTION
Transfer any usable paint from your previous session to the new palette surface. Add new paint and create enough of your mixes to cover the area that you plan to work on during this session.

Put plenty of paint out on a your palette. Mix enough of what you'll need. How much is enough? If you are constantly running out of your mixes, this could be a clue!

Stay away from using paint that has started to harden or grow sticky as the bonding action between paint and canvas occurs during the drying process. If drying has already started, you lose some of the strength of the paint layer. This will lessen the archival quality of your piece.

You also end up with chunks of dried paint in your brush, on your palette knife and stuck to your canvas. Unless you are going for this effect, picking out the dried chunks can become annoying. Chunks add texture (which catches ambient light) and if your overall painting style is one of smoothness, those chunks are really going to show up.


When you are through with your session, pull leftover paint into small piles and place a few drops of appropriate oil on each pile. Cover your palette with plastic wrap and place it in the freezer. If you find that it gets flattened by all your other frozen goods, place it inside a shallow container. It'll keep for weeks.

Here is a good size oil painting palette from Amazon: (click to read more)