Archive: Studio
September 2022
This is the first palette I ever mixed, for a still life painting assignment in my sophomore year. I was still new to mixing and using paint, so I was scared to really go for it, instead opting to mix a very small amount of colors.
Compared to recent palettes, this one pales in comparison and really shows how I’ve progressed in mixing colors and arranging my palettes.
December 2022
In just a few months of mixing palettes, I got more comfortable with it, although I was still mixing a relatively small amount of colors. I began using reference photos to color match as I mixed my paint, creating a more cohesive palette that actually matched what I was painting. I found that this also helped me to organize my palette, which would make the painting process more organized.
January 2023
In my spring sophomore semester, the painting class was strictly acrylic paints, so this would be my last oil palette for a couple months. This was for a small painting on paper, so it wasn’t super expansive.
March 2023
For my acrylic palettes, I mixed my paint with acrylic extender and kept a spray bottle nearby to mist the piles every so often so that they would not dry out.
Although the entire semester was in acrylics, I ended up not using them after it ended. I didn’t end up liking the plastic-y, artificial look of the paint.
April 2023
The paint mixing process had become an integral part of my practice at this point. It took me hours to prepare my palettes (depending on the painting size), which limited the amount I mixed while painting. This allowed me to get smooth gradients and focus on bridging with transitionary shades, creating naturalistically rendered figures.
September 2023
I finally got a glass palette to mix my paints on in my junior year! This was so much easier, efficient, and less wasteful than paper palettes (although I would still use them to line my palette box. I was also back to oil paints because I preferred them for painting the human body and rendering skin.
October 2023
This is also when I got a palette box. The box allowed me to keep my paint fresher for longer in an airtight container, which was useful especially when working on larger pieces. This also allowed me to save more paint – with saran wrap, I found that the paint would smear against the plastic and get messy quickly. With the lid of the box, clean up began getting easier and faster, which I appreciated as a student with lots of other commitments and classes.
October 2023
This is the glass palette I mixed my paint on (RIP), which was always more messy than the palette my finished piles of paint ended up on. It was an old side to an aquarium, thick and tempered so that it wouldn’t break easily, which my friend Thomas gave me as a parting gift when he graduated in May 2023.
November 2023
Sometimes, my palette box would get a bit chaotic. This is my palette when I was working on 10 small pieces all at once for my painting class.
I always lined my studio desk with brown or white butcher paper to prevent it from being soaked with paint, which can be seen underneath the box.
December 2023
In order to save myself from constantly buying razors to scrape two glass palettes at the end of every painting, I began using paper palettes to line my palette box, while still using a glass palette directly to mix. I found that this method made clean up a lot easier.
January 2024
February 2024
This is a palette I mixed for my painting, “Into the Light.” I always end up going back and mixing a few more colors than I originally mixed and adding them to my palette. This is because as I’m painting, I realize I need a slightly different value or chroma.
Sometimes, I won’t even go back to mix and will mix the preexisting colors on the palette instead.
September/October 2024
I finally graduated from keeping my linseed oil and turpenoid in old containers. For two painting workshops I took in Florence in July 2024, I got metal containers for both. They are both much easier to clean and definitely more secure in terms of keeping the liquids inside.
My palettes continue to be premixed and organized by warmth going right to left and value going from bottom to top.