Art Tip for the Day..."Working" tools

When I say working-I mean that they WORK well. They work great and I've been using these tools for years and years. The item on the left, as you probably already guessed, is a palette. This is the one that I use for my ACRYLICS and works soooooo much better than a throw away or reusable white one (that is hard to clean, you know). It's essentially a piece of glass that my husband cut for me and good 'ol duct tape to keep it safe. You can tell by how shabby it is that I use it a lot. It's not very big-just about 8" x 10". That way I can carry it around and put it in an art bin so easily. Now, here's the great part-the glass is so easy to clean. All you have to use is your palette knife or razor blade after it's dry. Or you can just squirt it with water and let it sit while you're washing your brushes (yes, EVERY TIME or the acrylics will eat the bristles and it must be with a cleaner). I even lay paper towel on it and squirt the water on top. Then all I have to do is just swish it around and throw it away. Then it usually takes one more quick wipe. Love it. Love it.

The other is a cut piece of levis used to wipe off my brushes. This is how I thought of this: my son was throwing away a bunch of pants that weren't even worth giving to the good will. But he thought they would be great for me to use with my art. I told him that I usually used t shirts but he said I could at least wipe off most of the paint on the denim. So he cut them all up for me and they have lasted a very long time. I'm giving Kip the credit for this brilliant discovery. They're great because of the rough grain of the material. It takes off more paint than a cotton rag and I always use it when I'm done and want to get off most of the paint before I wash the brushes.

Just some simple ideas that make the painting process so much more enjoyable (I always despised trying to clean off those stupid reusable palettes and they never got very clean).

Oh....Last point about the palette. Why do I have a gray piece of paper underneath it? Because gray is the perfect mixing background. The colors are more true if you use that. I'm always very careful to try and keep that part dry but it does need changing every once in a while (not very often).

*****PLEASE NOTE*****

I will be changing my URL (blogger address) fairly soon. My daughter, the computer wizard, deemed it necessary as juliesjabber doesn't fit into what I'm doing these days. So, it's going to be laughinghorseart.blogspot.com. It makes more sense since that's my logo and it makes me smile just to look at it. I hope it does for you also!

Remember if you have a great tip...won't you please share it with all of us? That is if you feel you can. All of us in the creative world just love to learn new things because a good artist/creative person should never stop the learning process or their creations will become stale.