Masterson Palette
One of the things we had to buy for the class was a Masterson Sta-Wet palette, a large one. It seemed like overkill at the time but it ended up being very useful. It’s big enough to do lots of messing about with mixing colors, it’s sized to hold a pad of gray palette paper, and it made it easier to transfer the palette from home to class and back again without having to clean it out first. That meant that I could continue using the same paint mixes the next day or even several days later, depending on how much paint there was.
When you’re using these palettes for oils, you don’t need (or want) the wet layers in the bottom that you would use for acrylics. Humidity doesn’t prevent oils from drying out. In fact, one way to save oil paint for later user is to put it in water, especially if you then store it in a cool place. The water keeps the air from getting to the paint which slows down the drying process. Cold can also slow down the drying process, but you need to be careful about storing paint around food. (Please don’t.)
The downside to this palette is that it is just so large and my painting space at home is quite a bit smaller than what I had at class. And there’s just no easy way to use it if I want to try plein air painting, so I will eventually want to get a smaller palette as well. Sadly, it looks as though the smaller versions are not designed for use with oil paints, although Guerrilla does make a tiny 6x8” one that costs as much as the large Masterson box. Guerrilla does make what looks like a nice plein air kit, but I want to do some more research first before I go spending that much money on plein air equipment.
I do have one tip if you decide to use a Masterson Sta-Wet palette box. When you close it, work your way entirely around the outside seal at least twice to make sure it’s properly seated. If it’s not properly seated and you wait two days before opening it up again, chances are good the paint will be dry and not useable. And if it has been more than a day or so, likely only the larger globs will be useable and you’ll have to dig through the dried skin to get to wet paint. It’s worth it.
One of the things I’d like to do is to save up left over paint to mix my own earth color and then put it in a tube. You can buy empty tubes to fill. Of course, it requires a fair amount of painting to generate enough left over paint to have enough to make it worth filling a tube, but you can get the tubes for not that much money. The next time I’m at the art store I’ll see about picking up a few.
