Sotavasara.net

flakmagnet72 kirjoitti:Below I describe making/using a wet palette *deep intake of breath*:

You need:

Baking parchment - Reynolds, the aluminum foil people make this. You'll
find it in grocery stores right next to the aluminum foil, wax paper and
cling-wrap. It's also called baking paper by some people. It's very
much like un-waxed waxed paper... err... yes.
(08/08/02 - You can also use waxed paper for this, according to Craig Stocks)

Paper towels - If you need help with this, go away.
(08/08/02 - You can substitute a sponge for paper towels. Ref: Craig Stocks)

Container - What you're looking for in a container is something shallow,
with as much space as you'd like to have on your pallet. What I mean by
shallow is, you want to be able to get your brushes to the bottom of the
container at the angle you like to pick up paint with, because that's
what you'll be doing. A lidded container would be good as well, becuase
this will let you save paint between sessions (for me, this has worked
when "between sessions" meants DAYS.)

Making the palette:
Pre-cut sheets:
Cut out baking parchment and paper towlels into sizes that will cover
the bottom of you container. It's a good idea to make the parchment a
bit smaller than the paper towel for reasons I explain below, you could
also just cut off a corner. Make up a bunch of these sheets, so you can
keep them with your painting stuff and not have to stop to cut out more
in the middle of painting.

Prep for use
When you're ready to use the wet palette, line the bottom of the
container with paper towels, 4 sheets of paper towels ought to be
enough. Then you soak the paper towels with water. Really soak them.
You want them as saturated as you can get them without having any
free-flowing water in the bottom of the container.

After the paper towels are soaked, lay a sheet of the baking parchement
over the paper towels. It will start to curl. Let it. Once it's done
curling, flip it over and flatten it out. There is no "up" or "down"
side to the parchment. Rubbing the curled edges down with the back end
of a brush or modeling knife works pretty well.

Use:
Simple, use it like you would any other palette - You take your paints
and put them on the baking parchment. The water will come up through
the paper via capillary-action as the paper dries out, keeping the
paints wet as well. The fact that it's capillary-action that does the
balancing out of the moisture means that you shouldn't see your paints
getting any thinner than when you put them down. You can thin them,
blend and mix paints just like normal. You do have to watch out for the
paints skinning over though.

Nifty tips:
If the paint in the brush seems to be building up or getting "sticky"
you can touch your brush to the part of the paper towels that isn't
covered by the parchment. This will put moisture into the bristle of
your brush and let you get more out of it without dipping it back into
the paint again. Which us useful for when you're hand-painting those
vines, fishnet stockings, etc...

If the paper towels start to dry out (you can tell by just look at them,
or when your parchement starts to "lift" from the paper towels), use an
eye dropper to re-wet them. The water will spread out naturally, so you
can just drop the water onto the section of paper towels you left
uncovered by the parchement.

No matter how long you may be able to get away with re-using the same
paper towels under different sheets of baking parchment, change the
paper towels from time to time. They _will_ start to decompose, and the
resultant ickyness might(?) screw up your paints. Then again, if you're
painting nurgle models...

Note For the common-sense impaired - This really only works for paints
that are water-based, like acrylics... don't use this for alcohol-based
paints or enamels. I have not used this with inks either, so I'm not
sure if the parchment would let them soak in to the paper towels or not.