My Palette

I used wood or wood-like palettes until I retired and started painting just about every day after my studio was completed.  I'm a "dirty" painter - I don't always clean my palette at the end of a days painting. After a while I have a palette with gobs of gunk firmly attached.  Scraping the hardened gobs of gunk off of a wood palette was just destroying the palette with gouges, scrapes - you know what I'm talking about if you use a wooden palette & you're like me.

I found the answer at Walmart (where else?) in the kitchen doo-hickey department. It's a 16x20 inch glass cutting board.  I keep it on my taboret in an upside-down 16x20 inch picture frame.  Underneath the glass I keep a 16x20 inch piece of masonite (as a filler to fit the frame) covered with very light gray (almost white) water color paper.  After I scrape the gobs of gunk off of my palette I clean the glass with Citrus King "degreaser".  Sooner or later the paper under the palette becomes stained and I replace it with a clean sheet of paper. IT WORKS FOR ME!  :-)

A corner of my gunky palette an my gunky taboret top showing my de-gunking tool - a razor blade.  I've used this glass palette for almost a year and the razor has made a couple of scratches but it's still in really good shape - for a paint palette.

 

This is my upside-down picture frame with watercolor paper & a sheet of paper with a grid for making "portait colors"

My brush holder - a piece of wood picture frame molding with some notches cut into the short side.  This keeps my brushes off of my (ahem) clean taboret top, and keeps the brush from rollong off of the taboret onto the floor.