Yep, it's a dirty job, but I had to do it. This is my watercolor palette. Normally, after I'm done with a painting, it gets sprayed down and the big mixing area gets wiped clean. Sometimes I run the whole thing under a gentle stream of tap water to clean the muddy surface of the dried pigments in the well. That's the nice thing about watercolor - you can put the paint in the wells and let it dry, and for the most part, you can re-wet it and use it as needed over and over .... and over .... and over... My palette hasn't been really cleaned out in one year and nine months. It took several bouts of soaking for thirty minutes and then scrubbing for thirty minutes last night to get it cleaned out. I took paper towels and palette knives to it. I took a fingernail brush to it. I even considered using a Dremel to get into the cracks the cracks. Tonight I worked on cleaning it up a little bit more. In the end, the tiny bits of paint left in the cracks got left, and it doesn't matter that it's stained green in places, because the green is going back there anyway.
Tomorrow, all fresh paint. It will be like starting all over.
5 comments:
My tastes are not so discriminating-the palette looks like a small work of art to me!
Rubbing alcohol will remove many of the stains.
For some reason, I love seeing other people's palettes. Do we get to see it with fresh paint in it?
It sure looks like you had fun with it.
Now you can show us the newly filled palette AND the painting you make :)
Looks like stained glass to me. And this is the clean version?
:-D Annie -- it is kind of colorful, in an easter egg kind of way, I think.
Catherine -- thanks for the tip about the rubbing alcohol.
Teri -- I'll show the new one tomorrow -- still yukky tonight.
Janey -- THIS is the dirty one. The clean one looks much better...
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