ratcreature | help for the clueless?

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help for the clueless?

This probably is a totally embarrassing n00b question, but is there some sort of trick or method to avoid your palette becoming a total mess when you color something or paint? Something that people who are not self-taught via trial and error are shown when they learn?

I struggled with this once again recently when I finished my

yuletart assignment (btw Yuletart has started posting this weekend so remember to check it to not miss the cool art that is being posted). I can't seem to handle color mixing in an efficient way.

My method when mixing acrylics to color my lineart looks something like this: I usually use two palettes, one for thicker colors (which is not so much a real palette as a largish cookie tin lid onto which I put a layer of very wet paper towel covered by a piece of sandwich paper so that the paint remains wet) and a palette with several depressions for mixing in a more watery way. I also have two containers with water, one that remains clear for making the paint thinner for glazes without dipping the brush in (usually I use eyedroppers for that) and one to use with the brushes.

I put small dollops of the colors I plan to use for mixing on the first palette and start to mix colors and put them on paper. Because for the most part I use acrylic paint in thinner layers I tend to either mix on the first palette until I get the shade I want, put a bit on the second palette, and add clean water until it has the translucency I need, or I add layers of more basic colors over each other on the paper. Sometimes for gradients I also start with less water and then do a wash on the paper. But inevitably after a relatively short while this arrangement becomes a mess, i.e. I run out of spaces to mix or to dilute the paint or both. Am I missing some technique that will make this whole thing more go more smoothly and efficiently?

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I use little porcelain dishes that can be stacked on top of each other when you don't need them (so they act as lids for the ones below and the paint will keep fresh much longer. They're about 10 cm in diameter, I use half a dozen at a time, for different shades. I clean them fairly often and mix a new batch of color, so the colors won't get muddied. Still, once I got used to these bowls, I've completely stopped using my palette.

I put small dollops of the colors I plan to use for mixing on the first palette

I put dollops of paint on two of the dishes (one for the warm shades, one for the colds, usually) and cover those with lids as much as possible. I don't mix on those. That really saves a lot of paint because it takes much longer for them to dry out that way.

I tried to look them up at boesner's website but couldn't find them, so I have no idea what they're called.

I think I have found what you describe on their website. So you use these? They seem to be just called "Porzellan-Farbschale". The part where you can stack them sounds useful. I'll look for them at my art supply store (not being any kind of related professional I can't use these wholesale stores of course, but this doesn't look too odd or specialized).

Yeah, that's it! I bought them on a whim and was surprised by how well they work. (I've tried everything before - the oiled paper palettes, breakfast plates, plastic palettes...)

(not being any kind of related professional I can't use these wholesale stores of course, but this doesn't look too odd or specialized).

Aaactually... afaik they don't check that. So you could just tell them that you're a freelancing illustrator or whatnot. They didn't ask me any questions when I applied for my customer card.

I tried that at my local Boesner store. They asked for tax documentation (or some equivalent proof) that I work in such a field and earn an income with it.

Oh! Shame about that. Good to know.

Yeah. It sucked, not just for money reasons, but also because their closest store is quite convenient to reach from my place, i.e. roughly in the same corner of the city and relatively easy to get to with a bus from me.

And maybe I had just bad luck, but when I asked there what was needed to become a customer they definitely wanted that I show them something on paper that could prove my tax status as being allowed to buy there. It would have been okay also if it was merely a side income I could prove, i.e. proof of artwork sales with my tax number or something like that, and maybe I could have faked it somehow, but I didn't try very hard to cheat. I mean, who knows what gets checked and crossreferenced in these days of electronic data processing. I wouldn't want the tax office to think I'm hiding some income from them or anything.

I use a total mix, depending on the paints I'm working with.

Oil paints either go straight from tube to canvas or from tube to a traditional-looking wooden palette for mixing and then to canvas. I love mixing on the canvas, though.

Acrylics go straight from the tube or bottle to the board, or they go into a plastic thing that looks like a daisy (round centre with a bunch of 'petals' where each petal is a shallow dip that stops the paint from mixing), or I use an icecream container lid.

Watercolours either go straight onto the paper or are mixed in a china tray with little dips, or are mixed on a saucer.

I haven't tried oils so far, because I'm sort of intimidated by all the solvents and all the complications. I guess the long drying times are an advantage for mixing on canvas though.

I think part of the reason my mixing space ends up such a mess is that I need to add lots of water before I get the consistency I like (I usually paint many thin layers over each other). So I may mix a color in one of those little dips on the palette, even trying not to use too much color, but then when I add water it is still is to opaque, even though the dip is filled, so I transfer a bit to a new dip to make it thinner again, and run out of room soon. Mixing on the palette itself works okay for me in the last steps of coloring when I use thickest paint.

I have now bought some of the larger, but stackable mixing dishes

astridv recommended above, and will give these a try. Maybe those are more suited for my watery approach.

Oils are *overwhelmingly easier to use* than anything else I've ever tried. They're more forgiving, they can do almost anything watercolours or acrylics can do, and they can do stuff the others can't as well.

I was really surprised, because I'd always assumed they'd be hard to use.

They *are* hard to clean up after. I highly recommend buying a good brush cleaner (mine comes in a little tub, like some moisturisers). And they do take more time to dry, so you need wall space to hang them in while they're doing so (in a reasonably well-ventilated space).

Right now, I'm using mostly Windsor and Newton water-soluble oils, because I am a very, very busy person, what with having a three-year-old and a job, so I simply don't have time for the cleanup (or turps fumes) involved with real oils. They're still more fun than acrylics, though, even though the finish isn't quite as good as real oils, for me.

It sounds to me as though you might really enjoy playing with some of the acrylic mediums available. Gel mediums are good for the sort of thing you're mentioning. However, if you want translucent layering, oils work better than acrylic, for me.

You could always try mixing them up, too. I used to be quite nervous about that, but I've got two pictures that are over eighteen years old that are layered acrylic and oil (real oils), and they're holding up just fine -- no flaking or anything.

I've tried a bit with acrylic mediums, but I'm still quite new to acrylics. (I've only started coloring on paper in the first place because my rats chewed through my tablet cable, and I didn't have money for a new one to color on the computer, a couple of tubes with acrylic paint were quite cheap -- before I was always too scared from the lack of an undo button, lol). But I just don't paint a lot in general, lazy sloth that I am.

I don't actually mind the short drying time of acrylic paint, and I found them hugely easier than watercolors, which were what I had tried ages ago to color on paper which led me to conclude that I'm incompetent with that and should rather do it on the computer in the first place. I like that acrylics dry rather than partially dissolving again like water colors. I never managed to deal with that.

I might try oils at some point but the drying time and cleanup sound inconvenient. As for mixing them I've read that you can layer oil over acrylic just fine, just not the other way around, because acrylics won't stick then.

I don't think anyone minds short drying time from the point of view of cleanup!

The problems with acrylics for me are the lack of an Undo button and the slightly 'flat' quality they get as they dry. Oils look almost the same, wet and dry, so WYSIWYG, and there are several ways to undo errors (letting a layer dry, then painting over it pretty much gives you the option of washing off your new layer and trying again, and you can also paint over and over things, wet or dry, until you get them right, because they only mix if you try to mix them, not if you just 'lay' colour over the top of what you're painting on).

Water-soluble oils are somewhere between real oils and acrylics, but closer to oils than to acrylics. I really do recommend buying a few tubes. I don't find the translucence as amazing as oils, but it's much better than acrylics.

Watercolours are just plain hard. They take more technical skill and practice than any other paint I've used. Everything must be right first time, and one has to really plan for where light colours and highlights are going to be in the final picture. The reason people think they'll be easier is because they're so much easier to clean up after, so we give them to kids.

(The fun thing about acrylics not sticking is that you can get interesting textures. It's not something to rely on, though, if you want the work to last, even though one of my two favourites does use it pretty heavily. I've been lucky.)

Oops. That was me, too.

"Am I missing some technique that will make this whole thing more go more smoothly and efficiently?"

The more I think about it, the more I think mediums are the answer.

I'm not sure I actually get how mediums will make things easier. You mean adding something so the paint dries slower, yes?

Nope.

I mean I think you have identified having to use a large amount of water to get the thin washes you want to use, and that this makes it messy to manage.

There are acrylic mediums (gels) that give the effect of a thin wash without having to make things that runny. This gives you more control while you paint and also makes managing your palette easier.

Some mediums are actually quicker to dry than water, rather than slower.

I'll give it a try. So far I've only used a medium like that if the acrylic paints that have sort of a gritty quality too much water (like ultramarine blue) when I wanted a more even pigmentation. Maybe I should experiment more with that.

Might be very cool.

The stackable dishes also sound pretty useful, though.

I have to confess, I'm not an expert on acrylic mediums. I've been an oils or watercolour person for the last twenty years, whenever I've had a choice.

But my lovely partner bought me a bunch of acrylic mediums a few weeks ago (a tester pack), and the thinner gel ones do exactly what I just described, really well. I've been using them with the water-soluble oils, mostly, with a lot of success.

hmmm. it's been a long time since I've used acrylics. I draw like a write; very very slowly. But I used a grease proof paper palette -- it was sufficently big enough that I could mix to my hearts content and the waxy paper retains moisture on the surface. I never liked wet paper towels -- they bleed too muych

Well, the sandwich paper is a grease proof paper, so that doesn't bleed at all. The wet papet towel is just beneath for moisture. It's the homemade version of these acrylic palettes you can buy.

eta: how large was yours? the metal lid I use is maybe 15cm in diameter.

Edited 2009-12-07 00:51 (UTC)

I don't think it's a n00b question; I bet everyone has a different method.

It's been awhile since I've done much painting, but when I do, I mix my paint on a sheet of plastic wrap or a waxed paper plate -- i.e. something really cheap and disposable. It gets quite messy, but if I run out of room, I just get another plate or more plastic wrap. With watercolors, sometimes I'll get extra lazy and just use a piece of newspaper or scratch paper as my mixing surface. It's impossible to mix up more than a little bit of color at a time, because it soaks in, but it shows me what it'll look like on paper (which, with watercolor especially, can be quite different than on the palette), and it keeps me from over-mixing my colors. I will often overwork a color and end up with something kind of muddy; I started doing the paper thing because it's really fast and keeps me from mixing more than 2-3 different pigments together at a time, producing a fresher and brighter color. But it's really much more effective with watercolor than acrylic.

I used to have a bunch of old 35mm film canisters for saving mixed paint, but I didn't generally use them for mixing; I'd just scrape paint into them if I had a color mixed up that I wanted to save for the next painting session.

I also do the two-cups-of-water thing. The eyedropper is a really good idea; I never thought of that! I use a fat brush that I can load up with water and then dribble onto my paint. An eyedropper would probably be much tidier.

Yeah, I have the muddy color problem too. I think it is because I'm not experienced enough which colors will get what. I mean, in reality pigments don't react like theoretical color, and some results are dull and muddy even if you expect a bright color (and are not mixing too many). Like you expect an orange but it is some brownish thing.

But the eyedroppers are really practical. I got the idea because I saw acrylic ink sold in glass bottles with droppers. But I wasn't about to buy ink in addition to having already color in tubes. So I got a bunch of little bottles with droppers at a pharmacy (they are quite cheap) and besides an eye dropper for clear water use those for thinned acrylic paint too, like colors that I often use in washes, like ultramarine for example. I can then drop a bit of that on my palette and use it too. You can also control ratios much better. Like say I want a blue-green wash. I have the basic colors thinned in water, and then I can mix X drops of blue and Y of the yellow, use that color, and I can get the shade again easily if I need the same later.

Edited 2009-12-07 12:00 (UTC)

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