Finding the Perfect Palette For Your Home Studio Shouldn't Be So Hard! 

You all are such an amazing group! Thank you for all the cleaning tips and for sharing all your favorite palettes.

I learned recently that Masters Brush cleaner will work great at removing stains on plastic palettes. I tried it, and it worked beautifully. I recently bought a Creative Mark plastic palette with the middle divided into four mixing spaces. It holds over forty colors in deep but smaller wells. So far I am liking it. I do have porcelain palettes that I also like.

For me, ceramic is the only way to go.

I saw a video the other day that showed you can use a regular white eraser and it removes the stains on a plastic palette, just fyi 😊 I love the Meeden ceramic palette with 33 wells!

I have 2 Blick plastic palettes, a Sterling Edwards , a Quiller Travel palette, 3 American Journey ceramic palettes, a cheap Joe's plastic square palette, about 5 handheld plastic palettes similar to the first ones you featured, a ceramic flower palette, 3 butcher trays, several ceramic round and oval dishes from thrift stores, and about 35 tin palettes of various ages from 1901 to modern times. Oh boy, I've got a problem!!!!!!! Ceramic are my favorite for studio, handheld plastic and small tins for urban sketching or plein air, and my vintage sets are for display in my studio and a few I repurposed with my own paints. I love watercolor and teach beginner watercolor too. One can never have too many palettes or paint..lol!

A trick for when your plastic or even tin trays, get stained from your watercolor. You can use polymer eraser to remove the color. I had been so disappointed when my watercolor tin stained so easily. I was equally thrilled to discover that the polymer eraser removed all the color. Give it a try.

I ordered cheap white ceramic appetizer plates that came in a pack of 4 for about $10USD. They don’t have wells but I can fit quite about 10 colors on at a time. I currently have them set up by hue with warm colors on one side and cool colors on the other. I label them with waterproof markers so I know what is what. Pros: - super cheap - lots of mixing space - sturdy - doesn’t stain - easy to clean - the plates are long and narrow so they give me a lot more room for my water and other supplies Cons: - no wells for mixing larger batches of color - I tend to paint small and rarely need large amounts of paint for washes. I use a little flower shaped ceramic bowl for this purpose. - not having wells so sometimes mean my colors touch and things get messy but honestly this doesn’t bother me me that much - ceramic plates are heavy but there’s only four of them and I typically only work with only 1 or 2 at any given time so again, doesn’t bug me that much

I have an American Journey Cavalcade Porcelain palette from Cheap Joe’s Art Stuff. When I first started in watercolor a few years ago they had a starter set that included this palette and a dozen or so tubes of American Journey watercolor paints. It’s a great palette and the porcelain is awesome. Paint never beads up on it and it never stains. The wells are large and there are 2 large mixing areas in the center. It has a clear cover, and I also purchased the “piggyback” plastic palette that fits in the lid to hold a few extra colors. I’m not a fan of the piggyback because it’s fairly flimsy plastic and hard for me to use. The only downside to the porcelain is that it’s heavy so it definitely stays in the studio. I’ve noticed that Cheap Joe’s puts it on a good sale price quite often. I have a couple plastic and one metal palette that I got for travel, but I really don’t like using them after the luxury of the porcelain. Princess syndrome I guess! Thank you, Becky, for all your hard work creating these videos for us! You are a gem! 🥰

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on palettes. I find it interesting to see what works and doesn't work for other artists. It always gives me ideas. So far the palette I like best is the Robax round one. I have the small travel palette (41 well insert for their larger ones). I put in on a round ball bearing thing and can spin it to get the color I want closest to me. It allows me to put my colors in the order (mostly) of a spectral color wheel. What I don't like about it is the lack of mixing area on it (I use smaller ceramic flower/round ones for that). The Robax ones with mixing areas are *way* to large for my desk.... So... I am still looking for the 'perfect' palette. Thanks for sharing!

Thank you for the info on palettes! I never knew there were so many. I only have a small area to paint in so I have the Meeden 7" round 12 openings. I love it. It's small enough to fit on my kitchen table. But I'm really wanting a big one like you were showing. Thank you. ♥️

I love my Martin Universal 24 well fold up palette. I pair it with 1-2 rectangular ceramic plates (Daiso is a great source) for mixing, because ceramic is SO much easier to mix on. About $25 for the whole set up.

I love your teaching style and after watching one video and seeing those deliciously moist M Graham watercolors, I visited the Spokane Art Supply website where I purchased your teacher's palette along with a second one called M Graham "Teacher's Choice" Watercolor Palette. The palettes are plastic with deeper wells than my more expensive empty palettes but they are my favorites because the wells are deep, making it easy to dip a brush into them and tube paints dry very nicely in them. Could you make a video where you only use your teacher's palette? If I had discovered your channel earlier and purchased only these two palettes of professional grade watercolors with the included (very nice) brushes, my bank account would be a lot healthier. Back then, I watched about ten RU-vid artists and for some reason felt I had to buy the same paints. brushes and paper they had or were reviewing. It wasn't long before I was overwhelmed by my supplies which led to a new shopping addiction - storage for art supplies. After watching this palette video today, I pulled out every plastic palette I had purchased and filled from tubes. It didn't seem to matter how good or expensive the palette or the paint was, every plastic palette (except for the two teacher's palettes) had far too many wells with loose or crumbled paint. I pulled all the insides out of the palettes and dumped them in the trash and then used the empty palette boxes to make very nice storage cases for all of my different brands of tube paints. I have the huge Meeden porcelain studio palette filled with Matthew Palmer paints and a few favorites from tubes I already had. I am happy to report that from the beginning, I have been delighting family and friends with hand painted cards for many occasions. Using acrylic paints I painted some fairly large canvases to hang on the walls of my son's new home and have added some framed watercolor paintings and many framed cards to his collection over the past four years. All of the recipients of my Christmas cards tell me they keep every one and use them as Christmas decorations as a set each year. I'm sure you know how happy that makes me. While I don't seem to be able to paint without a specific person or occasion in mind, I have a calendar filled with dates which keeps me busy and the tradeoff is, I don't need to store a collection of paintings. Thank you for all you share with us, I appreciate you so much!

I'm on the hunt for one that holds a lot more colors. I have one I haven't filled yet, it's a tray style like these. I think it holds 50. I saw one on Amazon today that holds ... 72! That went on my wish list :)

I tried several until I found my favorite-MEEDEN 33-Well Porcelain Painting Palette with Plastic Cover, Ceramic Palette 13.5 x 10.8 Inch. It has a large, divided center mixing area and I’ve been very happy with it!

I really dislike plastic palettes because they stain and the mixed paint beads up (even though I had roughened the surface). I use a ceramic palette with two large mixing areas that are separated by a low divider. It has 17 wells & a plastic cover. Of course it’s not good for travel as ceramic is quite heavy. I don’t even remember where I got it, but it was a bit pricey.

What is wrong with the John Pike palette? It’s big, it’s sturdy and has a big mixing area plus the lid ???

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