my palette has a layer of dried paint on it from 2022 and i'm scared to chip it
the palette is one of those cheap grey plastic ones from the art store, the big rectangle with the thumb hole. i've been using it so long that the actual mixing surface is a mound now, old ultramarine and burnt sienna and this orange i've been chasing for two years sitting under everything like sediment.
i know a clean palette is "correct." i know the colors get muddy. i've been told. but every time i go to soak it or scrape it down i just... don't.
part of it is laziness, obviously. part of it is that the dried layer is basically a color swatch of every decision i've made in that studio, and scraping it off feels like throwing out notes.
anyway it's 11pm and i'm sitting here telling myself i'll clean it sunday. i won't.
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ok this is going to sound insane but the mound IS the painting. i've got a palette with a ridge of burnt umber that's basically a fossil at this point and every time some well meaning person tells me to scrape it i want to ask them when the last time was that they actually FELT something while working. a clean palette is a filing cabinet. yours is a diary.
the mud thing is real, sure, but you already know which parts of it are lying to you. keep the sediment. soak a corner if you have to, but don't take the whole thing down. you'd be erasing two years to satisfy a rule nobody who ever made you feel anything actually follows.
"a clean palette is a filing cabinet" is going straight into my brain and never leaving, thanks for that. and yeah the "which parts are lying to you" thing is the real answer, i already know the middle zone where everything turns to grey soup. i just keep mixing there anyway like an idiot.
the fossil umber ridge is a flex ngl. i've got a little peak of that orange in the corner that's basically geology at this point and i think i'd rather move studios than scrape it.
Honey, I don't think it sounds insane at all. I quilt, and I keep every scrap too, the little triangles and strips nobody would call worth saving. That pile of cloth tells me where I been. A palette doing the same thing isn't laziness, that's a record.
Only thing I'd say different. You don't have to choose between keeping it and being able to work. Soak one corner like you said, leave the rest, and let the mound be the mound. Some of the old colors are telling you the truth and some are just sitting there lying. You already know which is which. Trust that.